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P. R. Mahapatra, S. J. Ostro, L. A. M. Benner, K. D. Rosema, R. F. Jurgens, R. Winkler, R. Rose, J. D. Giorgini, D. K. Yeomans, M. A. Slade (JPL)
We report Doppler-only radar observations of 1566 Icarus at Goldstone at a transmitter frequency of 8510 MHz (3.5 cm wavelength) during 1996 June 8-10, the first radar detection of the object since 1968. Optimally filtered and folded spectra achieve a maximum opposite-circular (OC) polarization signal-to-noise ratio of about 10 and help to constrain Icarus' physical properties. We obtain an OC radar cross section of 0.05 square kilometers (±35%), which is about one-half that estimated by Goldstein (1969, Icarus 10, 430) and by Pettengill et al. (1969, Icarus 10, 432), and a circular polarization ratio of 0.5 ±0.2. We analyze the echo power spectrum with a model incorporating the echo bandwidth B and a spectral shape parameter n, yielding a coupled constraint between B and n. We adopt 25 Hz as the lower bound on B, which gives a lower bound on the maximum pole-on breadth of about 0.6 km, and upper bounds on the radar and optical albedos that are consistent with Icarus' QS-class taxonomy. The observed circular polarization ratio indicates a very rough near-surface at spatial scales near the radar wavelength.
The author(s) of this abstract have provided an email address for comments about the abstract: pravas@rhyme.jpl.nasa.gov