Ice and Non-ice Spectral Properties of Ganymede and Callisto

Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astronomy

Scientific paper

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Scientific paper

Our study of the lattice order of water ice on the Jovian satellites Ganymede and Callisto has provided us a view of the global distribution of ice grain-size and of non-ice materials. This study uses the near-infrared spectra returned by the Galileo orbiter Near-Infrared Mapping Spectrometer. Average spectra were generated for various regions, and models were fit to the spectra. The models use scaled albedos of water ice linearly mixed with derived and/or scaled non-ice spectra. Using scalings with simple spectral variation, the average spectra could be fit to almost arbitraty precision. For Callisto, three global-scale observations (60-100 km/pixel), one regional-scale (18 km/pixel), and one local-scale (6 km/pixel) observation were analyzed. In each, a group of icy pixels was averaged and a group of ice-poor pixels was avearaged. A small amount of ice spectrum was removed from the ice-poor average, and the resulting non-ice estimate was scaled for use with the icy average. From this are derived non-ice spectral estimates for the two regions and ice grain sizes for those regions. On Ganymede, eight 4-10 pixel averages at a 100 km scale are analyzed, in this case using a non-ice spectrum scaled from McCord et al. (Science 292:1523, 2001). The Callisto non-ice spectra all have a slightly red slope and a significant 2.7-μ m O-H absorption band (see Hibbitts et al., Eos, 82, Abst. P12B-0495, 2001). The derived Ganymede non-ice spectra have bands of hydration at 1.4 and 1.9 μ m as seen in isolated spectra from the trailing hemisphere (McCord et al., 2001), implying that this material is quite widespread. The icy regions on Callisto have generally fine grained ice (r = 20-100 μ m), although there is a 25% component of coarse (r = 0.2-1 mm ) ice in two areas (much like the ice in ice-poor regions). The ice on Ganymede has grain sizes of r = 10-100 μ m, except on the trailing equatorial latitudes, where r ˜ 400 μ m.

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