Other
Scientific paper
Jul 1994
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1994hst..prop.5391s&link_type=abstract
HST Proposal ID #5391
Other
Hst Proposal Id #5391 Solar System Giant Planets
Scientific paper
A total of 16 hrs primary spacecraft time is requested here in our attempt to confirm and to expand our HST Cycle-2 program of August, 1992 (GO3644). In that program, the HST/FOS was used to discover the presence of neutral OH in the Saturn magnetosphere. This was first observation of a molecular neutral species in a magnetosphere. The observed brightness of 37 Rayleighs in the OH 3085 A band places a lower limit of 160 mol/cm^3 in the region near the orbit of Tethys. This result constrasts sharply with prevailing theories and models of plasma source and transport processes at Saturn, which limit the neutral density in that region to < 10 mol/cm^3. It is necessary to confirm and expand the previous finding to provide constraints for examining source processes from the icy moons and rings. Our model predicts the OH cloud extends beyond Rhea's orbit. A source rate of > 10^27 mol/s is predicted and agrees with the previous HST result, but is more than 10 times estimates based upon ion sputtering of the icy moons and rings. Possibly, micrometeoritic gardening of the icy moons significantly alters the source rate. If so, this result has substantial impact upon understanding of evolutionary processes in the atmospheres of other planets.
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