A North-South Comparison of Saturn's Infrared Spectrum

Details A North-South Comparison of Saturn's Infrared Spectrum A North-South Comparison of Saturn's Infrared Spectrum

Oct 2007

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2007dps....39.3702c&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, DPS meeting #39, #37.02; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 39, p.487

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

Scientific paper

We compare the strength and shape of the ammonia and phosphine absorption bands in Saturn's northern and southern hemispheres. Infrared spectra between 2.7 and 5.5 microns (R 2000) were acquired using SpeX at the NASA Infrared Telescope Facility in support of Cassini/CIRS and VIMS observations of Saturn's atmosphere. We present analysis of data that were acquired during 2005-2007, during which time Saturn's northern hemisphere became increasingly visible as seen from Earth. All data were taken nearly coincident in time with Cassini cylindrical mapping sequences for VIMS and CIRS. The observed spectra were modeled using the Synthetic Spectrum Program, developed at NASA/GSFC for the interpretation of infrared spectra of planetary atmospheres. We explore several free parameters, including the mixing ratios of ammonia and phosphine, and compare our best-fitting retrievals with those derived from Cassini/CIRS observations. We also investigate the deep cloud structure and its spatial variation on Saturn by modeling spectra that have very high or very low levels of thermal emission at 5.05 microns. This will help to constrain the pressure level of the clouds observed by Cassini/VIMS.
This work was supported by NASA through grant number NNG06G126G and the National Science Foundation through award number AST-0507558.

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