We'd call it medium-band imaging (about 10%), but we're lucky in that we don't expect narrow emission lines in this region and that we're about to be checked soon (I hope) by the high-resolution Composite Infrared Spectrometer (CIRS) on board the Cassini spacecraft. The atmospheric opacity is supplied by a spectrally broad quasi-"continuum" absorption arising from a collision-induced dipole of molecular hydrogen (a very weak absorber, but all the outer planets have PLENTY of it!)
Glenn Orton, JPL (co-discoverer)
That's right on correct. I'm waiting first to see whether Saturn's north pole has a cold polar vortex (like nearly the entire rest of the solar system atmospheres whose poles endure winter at one time or another)...maybe the Cassini infrared instrument (CIRS) will discover this in the next few years.
Now Uranus is now 2 years away from equinox, so it will be a bit of a wait until it's pole-on again, as
it was in 1986. The best we can do is compare relative temperatures, so I'm about the task of analyzing Spitzer Space Telescope (formerly Space Infrared Telescope Facility, SIRTF) spectra of Uranus and comparing them with 1986 spectra which I took at NASA's Infrared Telescope Facility (IRTF) at the summit of Mauna Kea, Hawaii.
For myself and Padma Yanamandra-Fisher, co-discoverers of the Saturn "hot spot".
Glenn Orton, JPL
Slashdot Mirror
We'd call it medium-band imaging (about 10%), but we're lucky in that we don't expect narrow emission lines in this region and that we're about to be checked soon (I hope) by the high-resolution Composite Infrared Spectrometer (CIRS) on board the Cassini spacecraft. The atmospheric opacity is supplied by a spectrally broad quasi-"continuum" absorption arising from a collision-induced dipole of molecular hydrogen (a very weak absorber, but all the outer planets have PLENTY of it!) Glenn Orton, JPL (co-discoverer)
That's right on correct. I'm waiting first to see whether Saturn's north pole has a cold polar vortex (like nearly the entire rest of the solar system atmospheres whose poles endure winter at one time or another)...maybe the Cassini infrared instrument (CIRS) will discover this in the next few years. Now Uranus is now 2 years away from equinox, so it will be a bit of a wait until it's pole-on again, as it was in 1986. The best we can do is compare relative temperatures, so I'm about the task of analyzing Spitzer Space Telescope (formerly Space Infrared Telescope Facility, SIRTF) spectra of Uranus and comparing them with 1986 spectra which I took at NASA's Infrared Telescope Facility (IRTF) at the summit of Mauna Kea, Hawaii. For myself and Padma Yanamandra-Fisher, co-discoverers of the Saturn "hot spot". Glenn Orton, JPL