2010 Annual Research Report

     Pitman joined PSI in 2008; in 2009-2010, held concurrent positions as a NASA contractor under J. B Dalton III  (Division 32, Planetary Ices Group) at Jet Propulsion Laboratory and as a consultant under A. M. Hofmeister at Washington University – St. Louis.  Contractor for T. Prettyman at PSI coding for Dawn GRaND and PI on 2 grants through PSI in 2010.

Her 2010 research focus is on  Inferring Chemical Composition of Astronomical & Planetary Materials From Laboratory Spectroscopy, where she: Utilized laboratory reflectance and absorbance spectroscopy to infer composition and physical properties of circumstellar and interstallar dust and planetary ices;  Derived new optical constants (indices of refraction) for Jupiter-relevant evaporite minerals from cryogenic and room temperature measurements to be published in 2010-2012;  Performed pilot studies on mid-ultraviolet to visible wavelength spectroscopy on cosmic dust analogs;  PI on 2 new grants to PSI under NASA, NSF.

      Papers

2010 Pitman, K.M., Buratti, B.J., Mosher, J.A.  Disk-integrated bolometric Bond albedos and rotational light curves of saturnian satellites from Cassini Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer, Icarus, 206(2), pp. 537-560, doi:10.1016/j.icarus.2009.12.001. [“Cassini at Saturn” special issue] (PSI Contribution # 465) 

2010 Pitman, K.M., Dijkstra, C., Hofmeister, A.M., Speck, A.K. (2010). Infrared laboratory absorbance spectra 
of olivine: Using classical dispersion analysis to extract peak parameters, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 406, 460-481. (PSI Contribution # 455)