Saturn's atmosphere at 1-10 kilometer resolution: Cassini imaging during the final year
Abstract
We present images of Saturn from the final phases of the Cassini mission, including images with 0.5 km per pixel resolution, as high as any Saturn images ever taken. Notable features are puffy clouds resembling terrestrial cumulus, dome and bowl shaped cloud structures indicating upwelling in anticyclones and downwelling in cyclones respectively, and filaments, which are thread-like clouds that remain coherent over distances of 20,000 km. From the coherence of the filaments, we give upper bounds on the diffusivity and kinetic energy dissipation. Our methane-band imagery finds haze covering 64°-74° planetocentric latitude. A radiative transfer analysis by Sanz-Requena et al. [2018] indicates that methane-band imagery is most useful in determining haze properties in the 60-250 mbar pressure range. The filaments are present in this range. Cumulus clouds are deeper, but pressure levels are uncertain below the 250 mbar level. [Geophys. Res. Lett., accepted 24 July 2018, doi:10.1029/2018GL079255]
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2018
- Bibcode:
- 2018AGUFM.P43E3815I
- Keywords:
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- 0343 Planetary atmospheres;
- ATMOSPHERIC COMPOSITION AND STRUCTUREDE: 2459 Planetary ionospheres;
- IONOSPHEREDE: 5739 Meteorology;
- PLANETARY SCIENCES: FLUID PLANETSDE: 5759 Rings and dust;
- PLANETARY SCIENCES: FLUID PLANETS