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| Titel |
CASSINI-CDA's hunt for exogenous dust around Saturn: confronting modeling with data |
| VerfasserIn |
Nicolas Altobelli, Sascha Kempf, Veerle Sterken, Ralf Srama, Georg Moragas, Eberhard Gruen |
| Konferenz |
EGU General Assembly 2011
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| Medientyp |
Artikel
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| Sprache |
Englisch
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| Digitales Dokument |
PDF |
| Erschienen |
In: GRA - Volume 13 (2011) |
| Datensatznummer |
250057382
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| Zusammenfassung |
| We present a progress report on the analysis of the CASSINI-CDA (Cosmic Dust Analyzer)
data set to constrain the in-fall of exogenous dust into the Saturn’s system. Measuring the flux
of particles not gravitationally bound to Saturn provides a crucial constraint on ring evolution
scenarii. The constant rain of dust particles, probably rich in carbonaceous and silicate
material, should darken the bright surface of icy ring particles and the darkening rate
can be envisioned as a clock ticking since the ring formation. However, the rings
still appear very young in a sense that ring particles seem to be made of nearly
pure water ice. While mechanisms of ’auto-regeneration’ have been proposed, the
current in-fall rate of dust is a missing parameter for evolutionary models of the
rings.
We screen the CASSINI-CDA dust detector data set obtained in the past 6 years for
particles whose impact detection characteristics would suggest an exogenous signature. Dust
particles not gravitationally bound to Saturn fall into two broad categories: particles of
interplanetary (IDPs) or interstellar (ISDs) origin. To support data analysis, we present
dynamical modeling within Saturn’s Hill’s sphere of various IDP expected populations
(Kuiper-Belt origin and long period type comets) to predict the expected behavior of these
particles along Cassini trajectory and the detection likelihood constrained by the
reconstructed CDA pointing profile. |
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