Publication Date:
1996-04-26
Description:
Just before earth passed through Saturn's ring plane on 10 August 1995, the Hubble Space Telescope Faint Object Spectrograph detected ultraviolet fluorescent emissions from a tenuous atmosphere of OH molecules enveloping the rings. Brightnesses decrease with increasing distance above the rings, implying a scale height of about 0.45 Saturn radii (Rs). A spatial scan 0.28Rs above the A and B rings indicates OH column densities of about 10(13) cm(-2) and number densities of up to 700 cm(-3). Saturn's rings must produce roughly 10(25) to 10(29) OH molecules per second to maintain the observed OH distribution.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Hall, D T -- Feldman, P D -- Holberg, J B -- McGrath, M A -- New York, N.Y. -- Science. 1996 Apr 26;272(5261):516-8.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉Center for Astrophysical Sciences, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD 21218, USA.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8614798" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Keywords:
Atmosphere
;
*Extraterrestrial Environment
;
Hydroxyl Radical/*analysis
;
*Saturn
Print ISSN:
0036-8075
Electronic ISSN:
1095-9203
Topics:
Biology
,
Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Computer Science
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
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