Investigating Pluto's lower atmosphere from a central-flash stellar occultation

Details Investigating Pluto's lower atmosphere from a central-flash stellar occultation Investigating Pluto's lower atmosphere from a central-flash stellar occultation

Oct 2011

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2011epsc.conf..334o&link_type=abstract

EPSC-DPS Joint Meeting 2011, held 2-7 October 2011 in Nantes, France. http://meetings.copernicus.org/epsc-dps2011, p.334

Physics

Scientific paper

A central-flash occultation is visible when the observer is located near the center of the shadow path. In 2007, we observed a stellar occultation from four sites from New Zealand and Australia. One of our sites, Mt. John Observatory, was 70 km from the shadow center and observed a central flash. Due to the large aperture and predicted near central location for this site, we chose to carry out a dual-wavelength observation from Mt. John Observatory. The centralflash observations for both the blue and red channels were very similar in structure and amplitude. We have modeled the central flash assuming either a haze layer or a thermal gradient. For the haze-only model, the rays contributing to the central flash come from an altitude of 1130 km. This altitude is much less than the current best estimate for Pluto's radius. For this reason, the purely refractive solution (thermal gradient) is preferred to the extinction only solution (haze layer). A thermal gradient of 5 K/km fits the flux level and an ellipticity of 0.085 and a nearly prolate orientation match the separation and relative strength of the two peaks. Intermediate solutions with some haze and some thermal gradient are possible.

Affiliated with

Also associated with

No associations

Rating

Investigating Pluto's lower atmosphere from a central-flash stellar occultation does not yet have a rating. At this time, there are no reviews or comments for this scientific paper.

If you have personal experience with Investigating Pluto's lower atmosphere from a central-flash stellar occultation, we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and Investigating Pluto's lower atmosphere from a central-flash stellar occultation will most certainly appreciate the feedback.

Rate now

Comments { 0 }

Profile ID: LFWR-SCP-O-1476638