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We have performed broadband color photometry of the twelve brightest irregular satellites of Saturn with the goal of understanding their surface composition, as well as their physical relationship. We find that the satellites have a wide variety of different surface colors, from the negative spectra...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Tommy Grav, James Bauer
Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
Format: Text
Language:English
Published: 2008
Subjects:
Irregular satellites
Photometry
Satellites
Surfaces
Saturn
Phoebe
inuit
Online Access:http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.316.7790
http://arxiv.org/pdf/astro-ph/0611590v1.pdf
Description
Summary:We have performed broadband color photometry of the twelve brightest irregular satellites of Saturn with the goal of understanding their surface composition, as well as their physical relationship. We find that the satellites have a wide variety of different surface colors, from the negative spectral slopes of the two retrograde satellites S IX Phoebe (S ′ = −2.5±0.4 %/100nm) and S XXV Mundilfari (S ′ = −5.0 ± 1.9 %/100nm) to the fairly red slope of S XXII Ijiraq (S ′ = 19.5 ± 0.9 %/100nm). We further find that there exist a correlation between dynamical families and spectral slope, with the prograde clusters, the Gallic and Inuit, showing tight clustering in colors among most of their members. The retrograde objects are dynamically and physically more dispersed, but some internal structure is apparent.

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