Atomic carbon in the upper atmosphere of Titan

Creators: Zhang, X.; Ajello, J. M.; Yung, Y. L.

Abstract

The atomic carbon emission C I line feature at 1657 Å (^(3)P^(0)_(J) -^(3)P_J ) in the upper atmosphere of Titan is first identified from the airglow spectra obtained by the Cassini Ultra-violet Imaging Spectrograph. A one-dimensional photochemical model of Titan is used to study the photochemistry of atomic carbon on Titan. Reaction between CH and atomic hydrogen is the major source of atomic carbon, and reactions with hydrocarbons (C_2H_2 and C_2H_4) are the most important loss processes. Resonance scattering of sunlight by atomic carbon is the dominant emission mechanism. The emission intensity calculations based on model results show good agreement with the observations.

Additional Information

© 2010 American Astronomical Society. Received 2009 September 28; accepted 2009 November 25; published 2009 December 11. We thank M. C. Liang and J. I. Moses for making their updated kinetics for the Titan model available and D. E. Shemansky for providing the Cassini UVIS stellar occultation data, V. Natraj, M. Line, and M. Gerstell for reading the manuscript. We thank an anonymous referee for providing updates of reaction coefficients. The research was supported in part by NASA PATM grant NNX09AB72G to the California Institute of Technology.

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