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Ground-based measurements of the methane distribution on Titan

✍ Scribed by Paulo F. Penteado; Caitlin A. Griffith

Publisher
Elsevier Science
Year
2010
Tongue
English
Weight
500 KB
Volume
206
Category
Article
ISSN
0019-1035

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✦ Synopsis

Using spectra taken with NIRSPEC (Near Infrared Spectrometer) and adaptive optics on the Keck II telescope, we resolved the latitudinal variation of the 3m 2 band of CH 3 D at 1.56 lm. As CH 3 D is less abundant than CH 4 by a factor of 50 AE 10 Γ‚ 10 Γ€5 , these CH 3 D lines do not saturate in Titan's atmosphere, and are well characterized by laboratory measurements. Thus they do not suffer from the large uncertainties of the CH 4 lines that are weak enough to be unsaturated in Titan. Our measurements of the methane abundance are confined to the latitude range of 32Β°S-18Β°N and longitudes sampled by a 0.04 00 slit centered at $195Β°W. The methane abundance below 10 km is constant to within 20% in the tropical atmosphere sampled by our observations, consistent with the low surface insolation and lack of surface methane [Griffith, C.

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