Haze And Cloud Structure In Saturn's Southern Hemisphere From The Cassini/cirs Observations

Details Haze And Cloud Structure In Saturn's Southern Hemisphere From The Cassini/cirs Observations Haze And Cloud Structure In Saturn's Southern Hemisphere From The Cassini/cirs Observations

Dec 2009

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2009dps....41.6811i&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, DPS meeting #41, #68.11

Other

Scientific paper

We analyze the thermal infrared spectra of Saturn obtained by the Cassini-CIRS instrument to infer thermal and cloud information for Saturn's stratosphere and upper troposphere. We use a narrow spectral window centered at 1392 cm-1 which allows us to characterize Saturn's atmosphere as deep as 1 bar and is only dependent on molecular species tha are well constrained (CH4 and H2).
Therefore an excess of atmospheric opacity at this wavelength can be attributed to the presence of additional atmospheric absorbers (haze or cloud particules).
The study of the zonal mean brightness temperature at 1392 cm-1 exhibits two regions with qualitative different behaviour in the southern hemisphere:
- The region south of 65S shows a higher than expected brightness temperature. This indicates that the emission is likely to originate from the warm upper stratosphere -- around the 10 mbar pressure level -- possibly by a haze layer.
- On the other hand,
the mid-latitudes (20S-55S) show relatively low brightness temperatures with emission coming from the upper troposphere (near and above 1 bar pressure)
We use a numerical inversion to constrain the absorption coefficient, the optical thickness and the pressure level of the cloud/haze structure in Saturn's southern hemisphere and present the results for selected latitudes. We use a chi square optimization in order to validate the results of the numerical inversion.

Affiliated with

Also associated with

No associations

Rating

Haze And Cloud Structure In Saturn's Southern Hemisphere From The Cassini/cirs Observations does not yet have a rating. At this time, there are no reviews or comments for this scientific paper.

If you have personal experience with Haze And Cloud Structure In Saturn's Southern Hemisphere From The Cassini/cirs Observations, we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and Haze And Cloud Structure In Saturn's Southern Hemisphere From The Cassini/cirs Observations will most certainly appreciate the feedback.

Rate now

Comments { 0 }

Profile ID: LFWR-SCP-O-1887040