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In the last few years Cassini-VIMS, the Visible and Infared MappingSpectrometer, returned to us a comprehensive view of the Saturn's icysatellites and rings. After having analyzed the satellites' spectral properties(Filacchione et al. (2007a)) and their distribution across the satellites'hemispheres (Filacchione et al. (2010)), we proceed in this paper toinvestigate the radial variability of icy satellites (principal and minor) andmain rings average spectral properties. This analysis is done by using 2,264disk-integrated observations of the satellites and a 12x700 pixels-wide ringsradial mosaic acquired with a spatial resolution of about 125 km/pixel. Thecomparative analysis of these data allows us to retrieve the amount of bothwater ice and red contaminant materials distributed across Saturn's system andthe typical surface regolith grain sizes. These measurements highlight verystriking differences in the population here analyzed, which vary from thealmost uncontaminated and water ice-rich surfaces of Enceladus and Calypso tothe metal/organic-rich and red surfaces of Iapetus' leading hemisphere andPhoebe. Rings spectra appear more red than the icy satellites in the visiblerange but show more intense 1.5-2.0 micron band depths. The correlations amongspectral slopes, band depths, visual albedo and phase permit us to cluster thesaturnian population in different spectral classes which are detected not onlyamong the principal satellites and rings but among co-orbital minor moons aswell. Finally, we have applied Hapke's theory to retrieve the best spectralfits to Saturn's inner regular satellites using the same methodology appliedpreviously for Rhea data discussed in Ciarniello et al. (2011).

Saturn's icy satellites and rings investigated by Cassini - VIMS. III. Radial compositional variability