Herschel/HIFI Observations of Titan : Observation of the H2O(110-101) 557 GHz Line and First Detection of HNC

Details Herschel/HIFI Observations of Titan : Observation of the H2O(110-101) 557 GHz Line and First Detection of HNC Herschel/HIFI Observations of Titan : Observation of the H2O(110-101) 557 GHz Line and First Detection of HNC

Oct 2010

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2010dps....42.6103m&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, DPS meeting #42, #61.03; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 42, p.1088

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

2

Scientific paper

Observations of Titan were performed on June 14, 2010 with the HIFI heterodyne submm instrument on board of the Herschel Space Observatory, as part of the guaranteed time key programme "Water and related chemistry in the Solar System" (HssO). The H2O(110-101) and HNC(6-5) rotational transitions at 556.936 and 543.897 GHz, respectively, were detected in emission. This represents the first detection of HNC in Titan's atmosphere.
Preliminary analysis of these narrow lines (FWHM 2 MHz), suggests that they must originate at altitudes above 300 km. They can also be fitted assuming emission above 800 km.
HNC is expected to be produced by dissociative recombination reaction of the ionospheric ion HCNH+ at altitudes above 1000 km (Petrie 2001). Water vapor on Titan was first detected with ISO (Coustenis et al. 1998). Micrometeoritic ablation at about 700 km is possibly the external source of Titan's water vapor (Lara et al. 1996).
A comparison with vertical profiles expected from photochemical models will be presented. The analysis of these lines will constrain the abundances of these species, and the HNC/HCN ratio at high altitudes.

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