Charged particle modification of surfaces in the outer solar system

Abstract

Voyager reflectance spectra data have indicated clear leading/trailing differences in the albedo of the icy Galilean and Saturian satellites. For the Galilean satellites, these have been analyzed by Nelson, et al. and, more recently, by McEwen. They have described the longitudinal dependence of this data and attempted to interpret this in terms of plasma and meteorite modification of the surface. Primary attention has been paid to Europa at which the leading/trailing differences are the largest. This data was reanalyzed extracting the single grain albedo (w) and constructing the Espat-function, W = (1-w)/w from this. Because w is near unity, W is approximately 2(alpha)D where alpha is the absorption coefficient and D is the grain size. In doing so, a direct comparison to the longitudinal plasma bombardment flux was found for the first time. This occurs primarily in the UV and is probably due to an absorption associated with implanted S, as the UV band of Voyager overlaps the IUE data of Lane et al. The relative importance of grain size effects and implant impurity effects can now be studied.