Stellar occultation investigations of Pluto's atmosphere

We investigate the shape of Pluto's atmosphere using data from the occultation of the V=15.7 star P131.1 by Pluto on 2002 Aug 21 (UT). We find that Pluto's atmosphere, as projected onto the sky, is noticeably non-circular. This implies an overall ellipsoidal shape, which could be an indication of high winds and/or latitudinal stratification. We decide to compare our results to those obtained from datasets of the occultation of P8 by Pluto on 1988 June 9 (UT). Previous analyses of these datasets by Millis et al. (1993) had led to the conclusion that Pluto's atmospheric shape did not deviate from that of a sphere. However, we find that the 1988 datasets do not conclusively demonstrate that this is the case. We conclude that Pluto's atmosphere is currently non-spherical and could have been non-spherical at the time of the 1988 occultation. Implications for high winds and/or latitudinal stratification present exciting possibilities to be investigated by the upcoming New Horizons mission to Pluto.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2003

Author dc:creator

• Salyk, Colette Vanessa

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Jim L. Elliot.

• Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences.

Statement dc:rights

• MIT theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed, downloaded, or printed from this source but further reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/114110

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/114110