Saturn's icy satellites and rings investigated by Cassini - VIMS. III. Radial compositional variability

In the last few years Cassini-VIMS, the Visible and Infared Mapping Spectrometer, returned to us a comprehensive view of the Saturn's icy satellites and rings. After having analyzed the satellites' spectral properties (Filacchione et al. (2007a)) and their distribution across the satellites' hemispheres (Filacchione et al. (2010)), we proceed in this paper to investigate the radial variability of icy satellites (principal and minor) and main rings average spectral properties. This analysis is done by using 2,264 disk-integrated observations of the satellites and a 12x700 pixels-wide rings radial mosaic acquired with a spatial resolution of about 125 km/pixel. The comparative analysis of these data allows us to retrieve the amount of both water ice and red contaminant materials distributed across Saturn's system and the typical surface regolith grain sizes. These measurements highlight very striking differences in the population here analyzed, which vary from the almost uncontaminated and water ice-rich surfaces of Enceladus and Calypso to the metal/organic-rich and red surfaces of Iapetus' leading hemisphere and Phoebe. Rings spectra appear more red than the icy satellites in the visible range but show more intense 1.5-2.0 micron band depths. The correlations among spectral slopes, band depths, visual albedo and phase permit us to cluster the saturnian population in different spectral classes which are detected not only among the principal satellites and rings but among co-orbital minor moons as well. Finally, we have applied Hapke's theory to retrieve the best spectral fits to Saturn's inner regular satellites using the same methodology applied previously for Rhea data discussed in Ciarniello et al. (2011).Comment: 44 pages, 27 figures, 7 tables. Submitted to Icaru

The Christiansen Effect in Saturn's narrow dusty rings and the spectral identification of clumps in the F ring

Stellar occultations by Saturn's rings observed with the Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS) onboard the Cassini spacecraft reveal that dusty features such as the F ring and the ringlets in the Encke and the Laplace Gaps have distinctive infrared transmission spectra. These spectra show a narrow optical depth minimum at wavelengths around 2.87 microns. This minimum is likely due to the Christiansen Effect, a reduction in the extinction of small particles when their (complex) refractive index is close to that of the surrounding medium. Simple Mie-scattering models demonstrate that the strength of this opacity dip is sensitive to the size distribution of particles between 1 and 100 microns across. Furthermore, the spatial resolution of the occultation data is sufficient to reveal variations in the transmission spectra within and among these rings. For example, in both the Encke Gap ringlets and F ring, the opacity dip weakens with increasing local optical depth, which is consistent with the larger particles being concentrated near the cores of these rings. The strength of the opacity dip varies most dramatically within the F ring; certain compact regions of enhanced optical depth lack an opacity dip and therefore appear to have a greatly reduced fraction of grains in the few-micron size range.Such spectrally-identifiable structures probably represent a subset of the compact optically-thick clumps observed by other Cassini instruments. These variations in the ring's particle size distribution can provide new insights into the processes of grain aggregation, disruption and transport within dusty rings. For example, the unusual spectral properties of the F-ring clumps could perhaps be ascribed to small grains adhering onto the surface of larger particles in regions of anomalously low velocity dispersion.Comment: 42 pages, 15 figures, accepted for publication in Icarus. A few small typographical errors fixed to match correction in proof

Vegetation's Red Edge: A Possible Spectroscopic Biosignature of Extraterrestrial Plants

Earth's deciduous plants have a sharp order-of-magnitude increase in leaf reflectance between approximately 700 and 750 nm wavelength. This strong reflectance of Earth's vegetation suggests that surface biosignatures with sharp spectral features might be detectable in the spectrum of scattered light from a spatially unresolved extrasolar terrestrial planet. We assess the potential of Earth's step-function-like spectroscopic feature, referred to as the "red edge", as a tool for astrobiology. We review the basic characteristics and physical origin of the red edge and summarize its use in astronomy: early spectroscopic efforts to search for vegetation on Mars and recent reports of detection of the red edge in the spectrum of Earthshine (i.e., the spatially integrated scattered light spectrum of Earth). We present Earthshine observations from Apache Point Observatory to emphasize that time variability is key to detecting weak surface biosignatures such as the vegetation red edge. We briefly discuss the evolutionary advantages of vegetation's red edge reflectance, and speculate that while extraterrestrial "light harvesting organisms" have no compelling reason to display the exact same red edge feature as terrestrial vegetation, they might have similar spectroscopic features at different wavelengths than terrestrial vegetation. This implies that future terrestrial-planet-characterizing space missions should obtain data that allow time-varying, sharp spectral features at unknown wavelengths to be identified. We caution that some mineral reflectance edges are similar in slope and strength to vegetation's red edge (albeit at different wavelengths); if an extrasolar planet reflectance edge is detected care must be taken with its interpretation.Comment: 19 pages, 6 figures, to appear in Astrobiolog

A renormalizable SO(10) GUT scenario with spontaneous CP violation

We consider fermion masses and mixings in a renormalizable SUSY SO(10) GUT with Yukawa couplings of scalar fields in the representation 10 + 120 + 126 bar. We investigate a scenario defined by the following assumptions: i) A single large scale in the theory, the GUT scale. ii) Small neutrino masses generated by the type I seesaw mechanism with negligible type II contributions. iii) A suitable form of spontaneous CP breaking which induces hermitian mass matrices for all fermion mass terms of the Dirac type. Our assumptions define an 18-parameter scenario for the fermion mass matrices for 18 experimentally known observables. Performing a numerical analysis, we find excellent fits to all observables in the case of both the normal and inverted neutrino mass spectrum.Comment: 16 pages, two eps figure

Geomorphological significance of Ontario Lacus on Titan: Integrated interpretation of Cassini VIMS, ISS and RADAR data and comparison with the Etosha Pan (Namibia)

International audienceOntario Lacus is the largest lake of the whole southern hemisphere of Titan, Saturn's major moon. It has been imaged twice by each of the Cassini imaging systems (Imaging Science Subsystem (ISS) in 2004 and 2005, Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS) in 2007 and 2009 and Radar in 2009 and 2010). In this study, we take advantage of each imaging dataset to establish a global survey of Ontario Lacus' environment from 2005 to 2010. We perform a geomorphological mapping and interpretation of Ontario Lacus, mainly based on a joint analysis of VIMS and Radar SAR datasets, along with the T49 altimetric profile acquired in December 2008. The morphologies observed on Ontario Lacus are compared to landforms of a semi-arid terrestrial analog, which closely resembles Titan's lakes: the pans of the Etosha Basin, located in Namibia. From this comparison, we infer that Ontario Lacus is an extremely flat depression where liquids, only located in the darkest areas in the Radar data, cover topographic lows where the "alkanofer" would raise above the depression floor. The rest of the depression appears rather as a muddy flat surface likely composed of a thick coating of photon-absorbing materials, explaining its still rather dark appearance in the infrared and radar data. We also determined whether surface changes occurred during the 5 years time interval between 2005 and 2010. We found that the depression contour is constant at the resolution of ISS and VIMS data, both being consistent with the depression contour derived from the Radar data. Our interpretation, in which the liquids are located only in some parts of Ontario Lacus, agrees with the lack of significant change of the depression contour between 2007 (and 2005 with more uncertainties) and 2010

Transcriptome of the Atlantic halibut (Hippoglossus hippoglossus)

Although the Atlantic halibut (Hippoglossus hippoglossus) is an important commercial species, there is still a deficit with regard to the number of transcripts in the databases, which can be accessed and exploited for targeted candidate gene and pathway studies. In this study, the RNAs from head, skin and GI tract from different developmental stages were sequenced to generate 22,272 contigs of 500 base pairs or greater as a molecular resource for this specie

Active Amplification of the Terrestrial Albedo to Mitigate Climate Change: An Exploratory Study

This study explores the potential to enhance the reflectance of solar insolation by the human settlement and grassland components of the Earth's terrestrial surface as a climate change mitigation measure. Preliminary estimates derived using a static radiative transfer model indicate that such efforts could amplify the planetary albedo enough to offset the current global annual average level of radiative forcing caused by anthropogenic greenhouse gases by as much as 30 percent or 0.76 W/m2. Terrestrial albedo amplification may thus extend, by about 25 years, the time available to advance the development and use of low-emission energy conversion technologies which ultimately remain essential to mitigate long-term climate change. However, additional study is needed to confirm the estimates reported here and to assess the economic and environmental impacts of active land-surface albedo amplification as a climate change mitigation measure.Comment: 21 pages, 3 figures. In press with Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change, Springer, N

Occultation observations of Saturn's rings with Cassini VIMS

We describe the prediction, design, execution and calibration of stellar and solar occultation observations of Saturn's rings by the Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS) instrument on the Cassini spacecraft. Particular attention is paid to the technique developed for onboard acquisition of the stellar target and to the geometric and photometric calibration of the data. Examples of both stellar and solar occultation data are presented, highlighting several aspects of the data as well as the different occultation geometries encountered during Cassini's 13-year orbital tour. Complete catalogs of ring stellar and solar occultations observed by Cassini-VIMS are presented, as a guide to the standard data sets which have been delivered to the Planetary Data System's Ring Moon Systems Node (Hedman and Nicholson, 2019b)

SUSY GUT Model Building

I discuss an evolution of SUSY GUT model building, starting with the construction of 4d GUTs, to orbifold GUTs and finally to orbifold GUTs within the heterotic string. This evolution is an attempt to obtain realistic string models, perhaps relevant for the LHC. This review is in memory of the sudden loss of Julius Wess, a leader in the field, who will be sorely missed.Comment: 24 pages, 14 figures, lectures given at PiTP 2008, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, to be published in the European Physical Journal