Near-IR Spectrophotometry of Jovian and Saturnian Aerosols -- Retrievals of Meridional and Vertical Distributions.

Details Near-IR Spectrophotometry of Jovian and Saturnian Aerosols -- Retrievals of Meridional and Vertical Distributions. Near-IR Spectrophotometry of Jovian and Saturnian Aerosols -- Retrievals of Meridional and Vertical Distributions.

Sep 1996

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1996dps....28.2215b&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, DPS meeting #28, #22.15; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 28, p.1144

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

Scientific paper

Photometrically calibrated grism spectra of Jupiter and Saturn in the H (1.45-1.8mu m) and K (1.95-2.5mu m) bands with a resolution of 107 were taken at Palomar in August of 1995. The spectra are meridional cuts at 6 different longitudes on Jupiter, with one cut crossing the Great Red Spot, and one longitude on Saturn during ring plane crossing. The technique outlined in Banfield et al., Icarus 121, 389-410 (1996) for the retrieval of scatterer density with altitude from near-infrared spectra was refined. Employing this inversion technique on the spectra yields well-resolved cloud densities as a function of latitude and altitude (1 bar to about 20 mbar) on these planets. This retrieval technique should also find use in the interpretation of many near-infrared reflection spectra, including groundbased, Galileo NIMS, and Cassini VIMS observations. For Jupiter, our results generally agree with previous inferences (higher polar stratospheric hazes, higher Great Red Spot tropospheric clouds). As new results, we find high tropospheric clouds over the Northern Equatorial Zone (as opposed to the Equator itself), and a minimum in scatterer density at about 100 mbar, just above the tropopause. This minimum can be explained by coagulation of settling particles, leading to an increase in fall speed. The results indicate that stratospheric haze particles are generated at heights where p< ~ 20 mbar. The latitudinal homogeneity of the stratospheric haze differs from previous inferences, and should have implications in calculations of stratospheric motions (e.g., West et al., Icarus, 100 245-259. (1992)). For Saturn, the results generally agree with previous inferences of the latitudinal structure of clouds, although we find the clouds about 1 scale height higher globally (cf. Tomasko et al. in Saturn). Interestingly, a clearing in scatterer density just above the tropopause is also present, suggesting that this phenomena may be generic to the giant planets.

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