A Possible Explanation for the Diurnal Patterns of Electron Density Inferred from Saturn Electrostatic Discharge Measurements

Details A Possible Explanation for the Diurnal Patterns of Electron Density Inferred from Saturn Electrostatic Discharge Measurements A Possible Explanation for the Diurnal Patterns of Electron Density Inferred from Saturn Electrostatic Discharge Measurements

Oct 2010

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2010dps....42.1114m&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, DPS meeting #42, #11.14; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 42, p.1020

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

Scientific paper

Saturn Electrostatic Discharges (SEDs) are radio signatures of atmospheric lightning at Saturn. Detections of SEDs were first identified by the Voyager spacecraft as they flew past Saturn in 1980 and 1981, and have continued to the present following the insertion of the Cassini spacecraft into Saturn orbit in 2004. The low-frequency cutoff of SEDs gives an indirect measurement of the peak plasma density (NMAX) in the portion of the ionosphere between the lower atmospheric storm and the Cassini spacecraft. These measurements augment the radio occultation measurements of Saturn's ionosphere - which give Ne(h), but only near dawn and dusk - by sampling NMAX at all local times. However, to-date no ionospheric model has been able to successfully reproduce the SED-derived diurnal trend in NMAX. We present a review of these discrepancies, from the Voyager era to the Cassini era, demonstrating that a photochemical ionosphere cannot reproduce the SED-derived trend, and we posit that SEDs are actually sampling electron densities in Saturn's low-altitude layers rather than near its photochemical peak.

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