Vertical Structure and Color of Jovian Latitudinal Cloud Bands during the Juno Era


Abstract in English

The identity of the coloring agent(s) in Jupiters atmosphere and the exact structure of Jupiters uppermost cloud deck are yet to be conclusively understood. The Cr`{e}me Br^ulee model of Jupiters tropospheric clouds, originally proposed by Baines et al. (2014) and expanded upon by Sromovsky et al. (2017) and Baines et al. (2019), presumes that the chromophore measured by Carlson et al. (2016) is the singular coloring agent in Jupiters troposphere. In this work, we test the validity of the Cr`{e}me Br^ulee model of Jupiters uppermost cloud deck using spectra measured during the Juno spacecrafts 5$^{mathrm{th}}$ perijove pass in March 2017. These data were obtained as part of an international ground-based observing campaign in support of the Juno mission using the NMSU Acousto-optic Imaging Camera (NAIC) at the 3.5-m telescope at Apache Point Observatory in Sunspot, NM. We find that the Cr`{e}me Br^ulee model cloud layering scheme can reproduce Jupiters visible spectrum both with the Carlson et al. (2016) chromophore and with modifications to its imaginary index of refraction spectrum. While the Cr`{e}me Br^ulee model provides reasonable results for regions of Jupiters cloud bands such as the North Equatorial Belt and Equatorial Zone, we find that it is not a safe assumption for unique weather events, such as the 2016-2017 Southern Equatorial Belt outbreak that was captured by our measurements.

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