Detection of Gaseous Methane on Pluto

✍ Scribed by Leslie A. Young; J.L. Elliot; Alan Tokunaga; Catherine de Bergh; Tobias Owen

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1997
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 259 KB
• Volume: 127
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0019-1035
• DOI: 10.1006/icar.1997.5709

✦ Synopsis

5% CO, 1.5% CH 4 (by mass), and N 2 in an intimate mixture (Owen et al. 1993). Assuming the N 2 -CO-CH 4 frost acts like an ideal mixture,

We obtained Pluto's spectrum using the CSHELL echelle one finds that X CH4 is only 0.0001% to 0.001%. However, Lellouch (1994) spectrograph at NASA's IRTF on Mauna Kea, on 25-26 May points out that Triton's X CH4 is several hundred times greater than that 1992, with a spectral resolution of 13,300. The spectral range predicted by the ideal mixture that Cruikshank et al. (1993) used to (5998-6018 cm -1 , or 1661.8-1666.9 nm) includes the R(0) and interpret similar spectra of Triton. This can be explained if the N 2 -CO- the Q(1)-Q(9) lines of the 2 3 band of methane. The resulting CH 4 frost is nonideal. Lellouch therefore suggests that Pluto's X CH4 is spectrum shows the first detection of gaseous methane on Pluto, inflated by a similar amount, so that X CH4 Ȃ 0.1%. Finally, there is recent with a column height of 1.20 ؉3.15 ؊0.87 cm-A (3.22 ؉8.46 ؊2.34 ؋ 10 19 molecule spectral evidence of pure CH 4 on Pluto's surface (Schmitt et al., 1994).

Pure CH 4 frost would supply more gaseous CH 4 than N 2 -CO-CH 4 frost, cm -2 ).