Light scattering by cometary dust numerically simulated with aggregate particles consisting of identical spheres

Light scattering by aggregate particles

We have investigated scattering properties of aggregates, emphasizing the size of constituent monomers comparable with the wavelength of visible light, in order to model the scattering properties of cometary dust. This has differentiated our study from previous investigations of aggregates in which the size of the monomers was much smaller than the wavelength. For aggregates, the absorption cro...

Computational Model of Light Scattering by Irregular Particles: Approximation to Polarization Measurements of Cometary Dust

We present a computational model to obtain the scattering properties of a distribution of non-spherical particles at visible wavelengths and its application to cometary dust and to laboratory scattering measurements of cometary dust analogue. We have calculated the size-shape-averaged scattering matrix elements for both regular and irregular compact shapes and the size-averaged scattering matri...

Scattering Properties and Composition of Cometary Dust

Composition of the Comet dust obtained by the dust impact analyzer on the Halley probes indicated that the comet dust is a mixture of silicate and carbonaceous material. The collected interplanetary dust particles (IDP’s) are fluffy and composite, having grains of several different types stuck together. Using Discrete Dipole Approximation (DDA) we study the scattering properties of composite gr...

Distribution of Retrograde Cometary Dust Particles in the Solar System

Scattering of light by stochastically rough particles.

The single particle phase function and the linear polarization for large stochastically deformed spheres have been calculated by Monte Carlo simulation using the geometrical optics approximation. The radius vector of a particle is assumed to obey a bivariate lognormal distribution with three free parameters: mean radius, its standard deviation and the coherence length of the autocorrelation f...