New results from optical polarimetry of Saturn's rings

Evaluating the carbon depletion found by the Stardust mission in Comet 81P/Wild 2

“…The data points corresponding to 81P/Wild 2 (red crosses) are consistent with those for other comets (blue points), and all of them form a branch of negative polarization at small phase angles extending to α ∼ 25−30 • . This angular profile of the negative polarization is qualitatively similar to that observed in other targets in the solar system (e.g., Johnson et al 1980;Levasseur-Regourd et al 1996;Shkuratov et al 2011;Zellner & Gradie 1976). An important parameter characterizing the negative polarization branch is the maximum amplitude of the negative polarization.…”

Polarization opposition effect for the Galilean satellites of Jupiter

“…In addition to the high-albedo Galilean satellites, the polarization opposition effect was further detected for three high-albedo objects: the B ring of Saturn (Lyot, 1929;Dollfus, 1979Dollfus, , 1984Dollfus, , 1996Johnson et al, 1980;Rosenbush et al, 1997), Asteroid 64 Angelina (Rosenbush et al, 2005), and the bright trailing hemisphere of Iapetus . In all these objects the minimum of the polarization opposition effect lies at very small phase angles: the smallest phase angle is for Europa (α min,OE ≈ 0.2 • ) and the largest one is for Asteroid 64 Angelina, α min,POE ≈ 1.8 • (Rosenbush et al, 2005).…”

Coherent Backscattering by Solar System Dust Particles

“…Lyot (1929) discovered the negative polarization for Saturn's rings and reported it simultaneously with the linear polarization for the Moon. Since then, the polarization of Saturn's rings has been observed, for example, by Johnson et al (1980). Further studies of the lunar polarization have been carried out by Dollfus and Bowell (1970), , and by .…”