Buoyancy waves in Pluto's high atmosphere: Implications for stellar occultations
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Elliot_Buoyancy waves.pdf
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Author(s)
Person, Michael J.
Elliot, James L.
Gulbis, Amanda A. S.
Hubbard, William B.
McCarthy, D.W.
Kulesa, Craig A.
Benecchi, Susan D.
Date Issued
June 2009
Journal
Icarus
Publisher
Elsevier
Citation
Hubbard, W.B. et al. “Buoyancy Waves in Pluto’s High Atmosphere: Implications for Stellar Occultations.” Icarus 204.1 (2009): 284–289.
Version
Author's final manuscript
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.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Physics
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Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.icarus.2009.06.022
