Global Mapping of Saturnian Haze

  • Park, Jaekyun (School of Space Research, Kyung Hee University) ;
  • Kim, Sang Joon (School of Space Research, Kyung Hee University) ;
  • Melin, Henrik (Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Leicester) ;
  • Stallard, Tom S. (Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Leicester)
  • 발행 : 2019.04.10

초록

Recent analyses of spectro-images of Saturn observed by Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS)/Cassini revealed altitudinal distributions of the spectral structure of haze in Saturn's south-polar regions (Kim et al., 2018) and at $55^{\circ}N$ latitude (Kim et al., 2012). However, other regions of Saturn still have not been investigated. We derived series of high-spatial resolution VIMS images of Saturn's limb at various latitudes. Using our developed code, the altitudinal intensity profiles of $3.3-{\mu}m$ emission and H3+ through different latitudes were plotted. Then we obtained the averaged vertical spectra of $3.3-{\mu}m$ emission which is all blended with fluorescent methane and hydrocarbon haze. The vertically-resolved spectra were measured from the limb of Saturn in 50km intervals to see altitudinal variance. We will present a comparison of spectral structures of $3.3-{\mu}m$ emission with different latitudes. Further investigation using radiative transfer to extract adjacent fluorescent CH4, C2H6, and H3+ is needed to derive spectral structure of pure haze. We look forward to a better understanding of aging process in a global view.

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