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Published Online December 23, 2004
Science DOI: 10.1126/science.1105806

Reports

Submitted on September 29, 2004
Accepted on December 1, 2004

Temperatures, Winds, and Composition in the Saturnian System

F. M. Flasar 1*, R. K. Achterberg 2, B. J. Conrath 3, J. C. Pearl 1, G. L. Bjoraker 1, D. E. Jennings 1, P. N. Romani 1, A. A. Simon-Miller 1, V. G. Kunde 4, C. A. Nixon 4, B. Bézard 5, G. S. Orton 6, L. J. Spilker 6, J. A. Spencer 7, P. G. J. Irwin 8, N. A. Teanby 8, T. C. Owen 9, J. Brasunas 1, M. E. Segura 10, R. C. Carlson 2, A. Mamoutkine 2, P. J. Gierasch 3, P. J. Schinder 3, M. R. Showalter 11, C. Ferrari 12, A. Barucci 5, R. Courtin 5, A. Coustenis 5, T. Fouchet 5, D. Gautier 5, E. Lellouch 13, A. Marten 5, R. Prangé 5, D. F. Strobel 5, S. B. Calcutt 8, P. L. Read 8, F. W. Taylor 8, N. Bowles 8, R. E. Samuelson 4, M. M. Abbas 14, F. Raulin 15, P. Ade 16, S. Edgington 6, S. Pilorz 6, B. Wallis 6, E. H. Wishnow 17

1 National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)/Goddard Space Flight Center, Code 693, Greenbelt, MD 20771, USA.
2 Science Systems and Applications, Inc., 5900 Princess Garden Parkway, Suite 300, Lanham, MD 20706, USA.
3 Department of Astronomy, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853, USA.
4 Department of Astronomy, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742, USA.
5 Laboratoire d'Etudes Spatiales et d'Instrumentation en Astrophysique (LESIA), CNRS-UMR 8109, Observatoire de Paris, 5 place Jules Janssen, F-91925 Meudon Cedex, France.
6 Jet Propulsion Laboratory, 4800 Oak Grove Drive, Pasadena, CA 91109, USA.
7 Department of Space Studies, Southwest Research Institute, 1050 Walnut St., Suite 400, Boulder, CO 80302, USA.
8 Atmospheric, Oceanic, and Planetary Physics, Clarendon Laboratory, Parks Road, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 3PU, UK.
9 University of Hawaii, Institute of Astronomy, 2680 Woodlawn Drive, Honolulu, HI 96822, USA.
10 QSS Group, Inc., 4500 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, MD 20706, USA.
11 Stanford University, c/o 245-3 NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA 94035-1000, USA.
12 Commissariat de l'Energie Atomique, Saclay, Service d'Astrophysique, 91191 Gif-sur-Yvette Cedex, France.
13 Laboratoire d-Etudes Spatiales et d'Instrumentation en Astrophysique (LESIA), CNRS-UMR 8109, Observatoire de Paris, 5 place Jules Janssen, F-91925 Meudon Cedex, France.
14 NASA/Marshall Space Flight Center, SD50 National Space Science and Technology Center, Huntsville, AL 35812, USA.
15 The Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA), Université de Paris 7 and 12, CNRS-UMR 7583, 61 Avenue General de Gaulle, 94010 Créteil Cedex, France.
16 Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Cardiff, 5 The Parade, Cardiff CF24 3YB, UK.
17 Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Space Sciences Laboratory, University of California, Berkeley, L-041, Livermore, CA 94551, USA.

* To whom correspondence should be addressed.
F. M. Flasar , E-mail: f.m.flasar{at}nasa.gov

Stratospheric temperatures on Saturn imply a strong decay of the equatorial winds with altitude. If the decrease in winds reported from recent Hubble-Space-Telescope images is not a temporal change, then the features tracked must have been at least 130 km higher than in earlier studies. Saturn's south polar stratosphere is warmer than predicted from simple radiative models. The C/H ratio on Saturn is 7 times solar, twice Jupiter's. Saturn's ring temperatures have radial variations down to the smallest scale resolved (100 km). Diurnal surface temperature variations on Phoebe suggest a more porous regolith than on the jovian satellites.


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