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J. Harrington (Cornell), R. G. French (Wellesley)
On 14 November 1998, Saturn and its rings occulted the star GSC 0622-00345. We observed the atmospheric immersion with NSFcam at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Infrared Telescope Facility on Mauna Kea, Hawaii. Immersion occurred at 55.5{\degr} S planetodetic latitude, to date the only occultation reported for Saturn south of the equatorial region. Our 2.3-{\micron} filter suppressed reflected sunlight. We present a light curve, its thermal inversion, and a wavelet analysis of the inversion that hints at vertically-propagating waves with amplitudes up to 0.3 K. The thermal gradient is >0.5 K/km on the stable side of adiabatic, and its profile does not show the alternating-rounded-spiked appearance of some profiles that lie closer to the adiabatic lapse rate. Atmospheric emersion and ring data were not successfully obtained. We present improved techniques for aperture positioning, removal of varying sky transparency, and timing, and discuss the effects of lightcurve noise on wavelet analyses of occultation inversions.
This investigation was supported by Wellesley College under NASA contract #961169.
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Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, 36 #4
© 2004. The American Astronomical Soceity.