1. Structure of Saturn's mesosphere from the 28 Sgr occultations
- Author
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Hubbard, W.B., Porco, C.C., Hunten, D.M., Rieke, G.H., Rieke, M.J., McCarthy, D.W., Haemmerle, V., Haller, J., McLeod, B., Lebofsky, L.A., Marcialis, R., Holberg, J.R., Landau, R., Carrasco, L., Elias, J., Buie, M.W., Dunham, E.W., Persson, S.E., Boroson, T., West, S., French, R.G., Harrington, J., Elliot, J.L., Forrest, W.J., Pipher, J.L., Stover, R.J., Brahic, A., and Grenier, I.
- Subjects
Saturn (Planet) -- Atmosphere ,Occultations -- Analysis ,Astronomy ,Earth sciences - Abstract
We analyze an extensive data set of immersion and emersion lightcurves of theoccultation of 28 Sgr by Saturn's atmosphere on 3 July 1989. The data give profilesof number density as a function of altitude at a variety of latitudes, at pressuresranging from about 0.5 to about 20 [micro]bar. The atmosphere is essentiallyisothermal in this range, with a temperature close to 140 K for an assumed meanmolecular weight of 2.135. Owing to favorable ring geometry, an accurate radialscale is available of all observations, and we confirm the substantial equatorialbulge produced by zonal winds of [approximately]450 m/s first observed in theVoyager radio-occultation experiments. The fact that the bulge is still presentat microbar pressures suggests that the equatorial winds persist to high altitudes.According to our radial scale, the 2.4-[micro]bar level, which corresponds tohalf-flux in the stellar occultations, is at an equatorial radius of 60,960 km.This radial scale is in good agreement with the Voyager radio-occultation data atmbar pressures and allows smooth interpolation of the isothermal structure betweenthe stellar-occultation and radiooccultation regions. We do not have such a smoothinterpolation between our data and Voyager ultraviolet occultation data, unlesswe discard the lowest 200 km of Voyager ultraviolet data. When this is done, weobtain a complete atmospheric model from an equatorial radius of 61,500 km down to an equatorial radius of 60,500 km. This model gives excellent agreement betweenall 28 Sgr, Voyager, and Pioneer 11 data. Key Words: occultations; Saturn, atmosphere; Saturn.
- Published
- 1997