Pluto Atmospheric Observations: NH Post-Encounter Phase, 1 Aug 2015- TBD |
Pluto Atmospheric Observations: NH Post-Encounter Phase, 1 Aug 2015- TBD |
Jul 31 2015, 02:57 PM
Post
#1
|
|
Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 1669 Joined: 5-March 05 From: Boulder, CO Member No.: 184 |
A neat paper by Jonathan Fortney shows this ratio to scale (approximately) with sqrt(Rp/H), with Rp being the planet radius and H the scale height. Both indeed decrease this effect for Pluto. If we assume the scale height of Pluto's atmosphere is 60km and the aerosols have the same height as the gas, then I was able to get a few numbers in the course of comparing various airmass equations. Earth would be about 39 airmasses in the horizontal and Pluto would be 6.4. These numbers would be doubled when looking at grazing incidence from space as in the NH images. I'd still like to come up with a formula for an isothermal atmosphere (exponential density decrease with height) by integrating the thin shell relationship over height and to compare this with the other formulations in Wikipedia. On the other hand, the isothermal case is within just a few percent of the homogeneous (constant density with height) case. To check the scale height and see why it is much higher than Earth, we might evaluate this expression for Earth and Pluto: H = kT/mg H is scale height T is temperature (a representative value since this varies with height) k is Boltzmann's constant m is molecular mass g is gravitational acceleration The Wikipedia link above shows this worked example for Earth: Taking T = 288.15 K, k = 1.3806488x10-13 J/K, m = 28.9644×1.6605×10−27 kg, and g = 9.80665 m/s2 yields H = 8345m Roughly speaking, if pluto has .07 Earth's gravity and the same T and similar m we'd get about 120km scale height. If the scale height is 60km, then the temperature would still end up being ~140K. So we can check how much the temperature increases with height over the surface value of 44K. There are other atmosphere posts in the Near Encounter thread as well (e.g. posts #1238 and #1252). -------------------- Steve [ my home page and planetary maps page ]
|
|
|
Aug 13 2015, 08:35 PM
Post
#2
|
|||||
Member Group: Members Posts: 244 Joined: 2-March 15 Member No.: 7408 |
I took the code I wrote to get the value vs radius combined plots of the 2 full-disk backlit LORRI shots and applied it to the 3 partial-disk backlit LORRI shots (lor_029920671, lor_0299206715, lor_0299206716). These are much closer but also much lower quality.
Data from 550,016 pixels across the three images are plotted here. This covers 8.6 times the number of pixels from the other one I posted, and at a much better spatial resolution, so the plot is much richer. The horizontal axis is the pixel's distance from Pluto's center (left edge is 600 pixels; right edge is 740 pixels). The vertical axis is the pixel's sample value (bottom edge is 88; top edge is (just below) 256). The sample values of the first two LORRI shots were scaled to match the brightness scaling of lor_0299206716. All apparent large-scale contours/concentrations apparent here were also apparent in each frame's data individually; they were very consistent. Artefacts near the bottom are from value-stepping in the original low-quality JPEG data. Here's the same data plotted the same way, but with each point rendered with a hue based on the pixel's angle from the center of Pluto. I had to write a different program to make this, and didn't bother with subpixel rendering. Instead, each pixel's data was written into a 560x256 array of lists (2-D binned, in other words) and each list of data was averaged to yield the pixel value. It was then scaled to 280x256 and cropped. While I was at it, I took some of my new code and rewrote a much better atmosphere unwrapper that's binned and processes each pixel in the images exactly once and so isn't susceptible to a lot of the artefacts that turn up with resampling. I also applied an array column-averaged correction to the sample values of the radius vs angle data before rendering to compensate for the uneven lighting around the disk. The bottom edge is the surface of the planet; the top edge is 78 pixels above the surface. The left edge is an angle of 178 degrees; the right edge is an angle of 288 degrees (I might have that backwards...and you might need to subtract them from 360...) The above version has been contrast-enhanced. The original output is below. |
||||
|
|||||
Lo-Fi Version | Time is now: 21st September 2024 - 04:22 PM |
RULES AND GUIDELINES Please read the Forum Rules and Guidelines before posting. IMAGE COPYRIGHT |
OPINIONS AND MODERATION Opinions expressed on UnmannedSpaceflight.com are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of UnmannedSpaceflight.com or The Planetary Society. The all-volunteer UnmannedSpaceflight.com moderation team is wholly independent of The Planetary Society. The Planetary Society has no influence over decisions made by the UnmannedSpaceflight.com moderators. |
SUPPORT THE FORUM Unmannedspaceflight.com is funded by the Planetary Society. Please consider supporting our work and many other projects by donating to the Society or becoming a member. |