Saturn and Titan: Why are their thermospheres so different?

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Saturn and its largest moon Titan provide one of only two known examples in our solar system of two bodies with non-transient atmospheres located at the same distance from the Sun. As such, they offer us the possibility of examining which other factors, apart from distance from the Sun, determine the properties of their upper atmospheres. Each body has its own exospheric temperature, day-night temperature difference, wind speeds and directions, as well as global structure of neutral and charged particle densities, so examining the origin of these differences will be of great scientific interest. The wealth of observational evidence expected from the forthcoming Cassini-Huygens mission will play an important role in addressing this question. In preparation for these observations we can already use numerical models to gain an insight into the relative importance of fundamental factors, such as the bodies’ rotation speed, mass, size, their atmospheric composition and the coupling to regions below and above. We will present results from numerical calculations by two recently developed global general circulation models (GCM’s) of Saturn and Titan in order to gain a deeper understanding of the underlying physics which generate differences in their thermospheres.

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