Water Ice Abundance and Grain Size on Saturn's Satellites Phoebe and Enceladus from the Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer on Cassini

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We are working on a project to analyze the visible and infrared spectrum of the satellites of Saturn as observed by the Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS) on the Cassini orbiter. We plan to characterize the grain sizes and mixing and layering of water ice, and the characteristics of the non-ice components mixed with the ice. The VIMS is an imaging spectrometer that generates cubes of up to 64x64 spatial coverage and 352 wavelengths between 0.35 and 5.2 µm. First we are looking at the close encounter with Phoebe, a distant satellite observed before Saturn orbit insertion. We have done a critical calibration of the data set that involves careful correction of dark artifacts. Last spring, we modeled areally mixed water ice and non-ice (assumed segregated because of the low 3% albedo of the non-ice material) for a medium resolution observation of Phoebe made 3 hours before closest approach. Using a Hapke roughness factor of 15%, we found ice abundances from 0.1% to over 10%. The ice grain radii vary from 1.5 to 8 µm. We are now applying the same analysis to Phoebe near closest approach (similar longitudes compared to three hours earlier, but many times the spatial resolution). Our goal is to make a projected map of Phoebe with the ice properties and other products such as CO2 band depth. High spatial resolution close-approach data covers half of Phoebe and the rest is taken from more distant observations. We are also critically calibrating the first observations of Enceladus from Jan-Mar 2005, which we expect will be an endmember of mostly ice, compared to the endmember of mostly non-ice for Phoebe. We will be looking for ice grain size variations and infrared bands of other materials like CO2. This project is funded by the NASA CDAP program.

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