Neptune's spatial brightness temperature variations from the VLA and Alma
J Tollefson, I De Pater, EM Molter… - The Planetary …, 2021 - iopscience.iop.org
The Planetary Science Journal, 2021•iopscience.iop.org
We present spatially resolved (0 farcs 1–1 farcs 0) radio maps of Neptune taken from the
Very Large Array and Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array between 2015 and
2017. Combined, these observations probe from just below the main methane cloud deck
at∼ 1 bar down to the NH 4 SH cloud at∼ 50 bar. Prominent latitudinal variations in the
brightness temperature are seen across the disk. Depending on wavelength, the south polar
region is 5–40 K brighter than the mid-latitudes and northern equatorial region. We use …
Very Large Array and Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array between 2015 and
2017. Combined, these observations probe from just below the main methane cloud deck
at∼ 1 bar down to the NH 4 SH cloud at∼ 50 bar. Prominent latitudinal variations in the
brightness temperature are seen across the disk. Depending on wavelength, the south polar
region is 5–40 K brighter than the mid-latitudes and northern equatorial region. We use …
Abstract
We present spatially resolved (0 farcs 1–1 farcs 0) radio maps of Neptune taken from the Very Large Array and Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array between 2015 and 2017. Combined, these observations probe from just below the main methane cloud deck at∼ 1 bar down to the NH 4 SH cloud at∼ 50 bar. Prominent latitudinal variations in the brightness temperature are seen across the disk. Depending on wavelength, the south polar region is 5–40 K brighter than the mid-latitudes and northern equatorial region. We use radiative transfer modeling coupled to Markov Chain Monte Carlo methods to retrieve H 2 S, NH 3, and CH 4 abundance profiles across the disk, though only strong constraints can be made for H 2 S. Below all cloud formation, the data are well fit by
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