Analysis of Texes Observations of Titan's ν6 Band of Cyanoacetylene at 500 cm-1

Details Analysis of Texes Observations of Titan's ν6 Band of Cyanoacetylene at 500 cm-1 Analysis of Texes Observations of Titan's ν6 Band of Cyanoacetylene at 500 cm-1

Dec 2007

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2007dps....39.5617t&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, DPS meeting #39, #56.17; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 39, p.530

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Cyanoacetylene (HC3N) is formed preferentially in Titan's winter stratosphere through nitrile photochemistry assisted by the descending Hadley circulation cell, which adiabatically heats the upper polar stratosphere. Cassini observations have detected HC3N emission at numerous locations over Titan's disk and confirm the Voyager result that the emission is concentrated above winter latitude 50o, sharply increasing towards the pole. With a lifetime of only 0.8 yr at 300 km, HC3N is a potential dynamical marker of seasonal meridional mixing in Titan's atmosphere. Observations at mm wavelengths suggest that the mixing ratio typically increases with altitude above the condensation level around 80 km. The Cassini/CIRS experiment has recently analyzed Titan's stronger n5 band of HC3N at 663 cm-1 but little information is available below 150-200 km due to band saturation. The limited spectral resolution of the CIRS instrument (0.53 cm-1) results in no sounding or altitude information from the spectrum of this band. By contrast, the weaker n6 band at 500 cm-1 can probe deeper but CIRS spectra are unsuitable for its analysis. We report an analysis of this first ground-based, mid-IR, HC3N spectrum of Titan. This was taken at the IRTF on Jan 15, 2005 using TEXES, the Texas Echelon Cross Echelle Spectrograph at R=15,000. The limited S/N required binning to an effective spectral resolution of 0.12 cm-1. Being 4.4 times higher than the CIRS resolution, the effective TEXES resolution is sufficient to provide enough information on the band width and shape to extract the ro-vib temperature and thus to constrain the altitude and region of formation. Initial results of our analysis will be presented.

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