English

Buoyancy waves in Pluto's high atmosphere: Implications for stellar occultations

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics 2015-05-13 v1

Abstract

We apply scintillation theory to stellar signal fluctuations in the high-resolution, high signal/noise, dual-wavelength data from the MMT observation of the 2007 March 18 occultation of P445.3 by Pluto. A well-defined high wavenumber cutoff in the fluctuations is consistent with viscous-thermal dissipation of buoyancy waves (internal gravity waves) in Pluto's high atmosphere, and provides strong evidence that the underlying density fluctuations are governed by the gravity-wave dispersion relation.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0906.4141,
  title  = {Buoyancy waves in Pluto's high atmosphere: Implications for stellar occultations},
  author = {W. B. Hubbard and D. W. McCarthy and C. A. Kulesa and S. D. Benecchi and M. J. Person and J. L. Elliot and A. A. S. Gulbis},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0906.4141},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

Accepted 18 June 2009 for publication in Icarus

R2 v1 2026-06-21T13:16:40.077Z