Saturn's Hydrocarbon Emission from Ground-based and Cassini/CIRS Observations

Details Saturn's Hydrocarbon Emission from Ground-based and Cassini/CIRS Observations Saturn's Hydrocarbon Emission from Ground-based and Cassini/CIRS Observations

Oct 2007

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2007dps....39.0401h&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, DPS meeting #39, #4.01; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 39, p.413

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

Scientific paper

Hydrocarbons in the upper atmosphere of Saturn are known, from Voyager and early Cassini results, to vary in emission intensity with latitude. Of particular interest is the marked increase in temperature and hydrocarbon line intensity near the South Pole (Greathouse et al. 2005, Orton and Yanamandra-Fisher, 2005, Flasar et al. 2005). Latitudinal variations in hydrocarbon abundances can be determined from measurements of hydrocarbon emission lines using temperatures derived from Cassini's Composite InfraRed Spectrometer (CIRS). Latitudinal, temporal, and vertical variations of stratospheric hydrocarbons provide constraints on dynamics, seasonal climate models, and photochemical models.
In an effort to monitor temporal and latitudinal variations of hydrocarbons in Saturn's southern hemisphere we are conducting a ground-based campaign using Celeste, an infrared (5-25 μm) high-resolution (<0.1 cm-1) cryogenic grating spectrometer. From 2005 to 2007, we have been mapping lines of ethane and acetylene at the McMath-Pierce telescope at Kitt Peak, AZ and the NASA Infrared Telescope Facility at Mauna Kea, HI. These observations are complemented by the Cassini CIRS hydrocarbon observations. Specifically, Celeste measurements at the IRTF in October 2006 are being combined with 3cm-1 spectral resolution CIRS measurements to infer molecular abundances for each species in the 1-10 mbar region across the southern hemisphere of Saturn. These results will be presented.
This research was supported by a NASA Postdoctoral Program Fellowship appointment conducted at the Goddard Space Flight Center. This research is currently supported by the NASA Planetary Astronomy Program.
References:
Flasar et al., (2005) Science 307, 1247.
Greathouse et al., (2005) Icarus 177, 18
Orton and Yanamandra-Fisher, (2005) Science 307, 696.

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