High Altitude Structure in Pluto's Atmosphere from the 2007 March 18 Stellar Occultation

Details High Altitude Structure in Pluto's Atmosphere from the 2007 March 18 Stellar Occultation High Altitude Structure in Pluto's Atmosphere from the 2007 March 18 Stellar Occultation

Oct 2007

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2007dps....39.5214p&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, DPS meeting #39, #52.14; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 39, p.519

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

Scientific paper

Visible wavelength observations were made of the 2007 March 18 Pluto occultation of the star P445.3 (UCAC2 25823784; McDonald and Elliot, AJ 120, 1599) from five US sites by our consortium (Pasachoff, et al., 2007, this meeting). Simultaneous model fitting to all of our light curve data yielded 1207 ± 4 km as the half-light shadow radius of Pluto's atmosphere. This radius is consistent with the 1208 ± 9 km result measured in 2006 (Elliot, et al., AJ 134,1) and confirms that the large increase in atmospheric pressure measured between the 1988 and 2002 (Elliot, et al., Nature 424,165 Sicardy, et al., Nature 424, 168) observations has ceased. Inversion of the highest signal-to-noise visible light curve, obtained with the Portable Occultation Eclipse and Transit Systems (POETS; Souza, et al., PASP 118, 1550) at the 6.5-m MMT (MMTO, Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory, Mt. Hopkins) resulted in number density, pressure, and temperature profiles for Pluto's atmosphere in the radius range of 1340 - 1460 km (assuming the dominant atmospheric component is N2). These inversions reveal oscillating deviations of the number density from a simple exponential profile in Pluto's upper atmosphere that are coherent across the 1000 km length of the grazing occultation and also in the 300 km line of sight. Here, we interpret this structure as vertically propagating waves in Pluto's upper atmosphere, and provide a feasible mechanism for the maintenance of this large-scale coherence in terms of Rossby planetary waves. This work was partially funded by NASA Planetary Astronomy grants NNG04GE48G, NNG04GF25G, NNH04ZSS001N, and NNG05GG75G. Partial funding for MMTO observations was also provided by Astronomy Camp. Some of the observations reported here were obtained at the MMT Observatory, a joint facility of the University of Arizona and the Smithsonian Institution.

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