Complex hydrocarbons in the Saturn system

The Cassini-Huygens mission discovered hydrocarbons--molecules and compounds made of carbon and hydrogen--of various sizes throughout the Saturn system, from the simple (methane and ethane) to the very complex (observed but not identifiable ions of up to 400x the mass of methane). In this dissertation, I discuss hydrocarbons at two of Saturn's moons, Titan and Enceladus, whose availability of chemical species, liquid water, and energy sources make them prime targets for investigating habitable environments within our own solar system. In Chapter 2, I identify evaporites via their unique spectral properties and explore what their distribution might tell us about the global availability of liquid carbons in Titan's past. I show that Cassini data are not sufficient to definitively identify or distinguish between evaporite deposits in Chapter 3. The data do support the findings of theoretical models, namely that the solid hydrocarbons deposits differ in composition and grain size, further evidence that the plethora of organic species in the atmosphere is mirrored and further modified on the surface. I discuss in Chapter 4 how observations of lakes at Titan's north pole may hint at the rates of such modification. An orbiter mission architecture to identify the larger carbon species present in Enceladus' plume is presented in Chapter 5. Together, these works represents an improvement in our knowledge on the location and diversity of carbon-bearing compounds in the Saturnian system.doctoral, Ph.D., Physics -- University of Idaho - College of Graduate Studies, 2017-1