Lecture 5: Saturn, Neptune, …

A. P. Ingersoll

api@gps.caltech.edu

1. A lot a new material from the Cassini spacecraft, which has been in orbit around
Saturn for four years. This talk will have a lot of pictures, not so much models.
2. Uranus on the left, Neptune on the right. Uranus spins on its side. The obliquity is
98 degrees, which means the poles receive more sunlight than the equator. It alsomeans the sun is almost overhead at the pole during summer solstice. Despite these
extreme changes in the distribution of sunlight, Uranus is a banded planet. The
rotation dominates the winds and cloud structure.
3. Saturn is covered by a layer of clouds and haze, so it is hard to see the features.
Storms are less frequent on Saturn than on Jupiter; it is not just that clouds and hazemakes the storms less visible. Saturn is a less active planet. Nevertheless the winds
are stronger than the winds of Jupiter.
4. The thickness of the atmosphere is inversely proportional to gravity. The zero ofaltitude is where the pressure is 100 mbar. Uranus and Neptune are so cold that CH
forms clouds. The clouds of NH3 , NH4SH, and H2O form at much deeper levels andhave not been detected.
5. Surprising fact: The winds increase as you move outward in the solar system.
Why? My theory is that power/area is smaller, small‐scale turbulence is weaker,
dissipation is less, and the winds are stronger. Jupiter looks more turbulent, and it
has the smallest winds. Uranus and Neptune have retrograde winds at the equator.
Jupiter and Saturn have prograde winds. No good explanation for that.
6. All four giant planets have temperatures controlled by the winds. The zonal jets
decay with altitude in the region above the clouds. The equator‐to‐pole temperature
differences are small.
7. Saturn’s winds measured in 1980 and 2004. Maybe some change at the equator,
but that might be due to change in cloud height coupled with vertical wind shear.
The westward jet at 35 degrees South has been the most active during the past fouryears. Winds are measured relative to a rotating reference frame based on Voyager
radio data. We would like to use the wobble of the magnetic field, but Saturn’s field
doesn’t wobble. It is aligned parallel to the rotation axis. We really don’t have a goodreference frame for the winds.
8. The last time Saturn had a large storm like this was in 1994. Large storms are
extremely rare, unlike Jupiter. The storms do not form permanent vortices. They
appear suddenly and dissipate in a month or two.
9. The northern hemisphere has been in the shadow of the rings for 10 years. This is
an image when the spacecraft was in the plane of the rings. The rings are the thinstraight line in the center. The northern hemisphere has less clouds and haze, and it

is possible to measure the Reynolds stress, u’v’ which is the same direction as on
Jupiter: The eddies are putting momentum into the zonal jets [ Delgenio et al 2007]
10. Storms in the westward jet at 35°S.
11. Merging of spots at 35°S.
12. A view of the night side of Saturn. It is never completely dark because the rings
are always shining. This makes it hard to see lightning. We cannot tell the difference
between lightning flashes and clouds illuminated by light from the rings.
13. The spacecraft detects the radio signals from lightning (SED = Saturnelectrostatic discharge). These happen about once per year. The active period lasts
for a few weeks or a month. During the active period, the flashes occur at the rate ofseveral per minute.
14. Each time the SED activity begins, we look for a storm. The top panel shows one
side of Saturn with a small white storm. The bottom panel shows the other side ofthe planet.
15. Cassini detects the radio signals only when the storm is on the side of the planet
facing the spacecraft. The upper box shows the SED’s in a reference frame based onthe storm that we see. This is evidence that the storm is causing the SED’s [Dyudinaet al, Icarus 190, 545‐555 (2007)]
16. Another view of the storm. It changes shape every day – like one of the active
places on Jupiter, but there is only one storm on the planet at any one time.
17. Evolution of the storm over a 25‐day period.
18. A new subject – the south polar vortex. This is an Earth‐based view in theinfrared, showing a small hot spot over the south pole. The season is summer in thesouth.
19. Here is the south pole in visible light. The colors were chosen to indicate clouds
heights. Pink = low clouds, green = high clouds and haze.
20. The inner ring is 1 degree from the pole (2000 km diameter). The arrows show
the direction of sunlight. The clouds cast shadows, which allows us to estimate theheights of the clouds (Dyudina et al, Science 319, 1801 (2008)]
21. The clouds are high – up to 75 km, which is much higher than the eyewall cloudsof a terrestrial hurricane. In units of pressure scale height, it is about the same – twoscale heights in each case4

22. Another view of the inner ring. The sun is in the upper right.
23. A high‐resolution view. The ring has a diameter of 2000 km.
24. A movie showing the cyclonic (clockwise in the southern hemisphere) motion
around the pole. This is opposite from what the models predict for barotropic
turbulence on a sphere. Baroclinic effects may be important.
25. Measured winds. The large‐scale flow is cyclonic (clockwise), but the small spots
are spinning counterclockwise as they go around the pole. Counterclockwise means
anticyclonic, which is consistent with horizontal divergence at the top of the clouds,
which is consistent with convection. The solid lines in the top panel are for constantabsolute vorticity − constant ζ + f. The line in the bottom panel is the measured
large‐scale vorticity ζ, which is nearly zero up to latitude 88°. The cyclonic vorticity
is concentrated in the center. This resembles a Rankine vortex.
26. Temperatures in the vortex are warm, like the eye of a terrestrial typhoon. The
cyclonic vorticity, the ring of high clouds, and the small convective clouds outside
the ring are also similar to a terrestrial typhoon. The differences are that it is locked
to the pole, and is not interacting with an ocean underneath. The interaction withthe deep atmosphere is unknown, although it might have some similarities with thatof a typhoon.
27. The north pole has a hexagon at 75°N. The diameter is 30,000 km. It wasdiscovered by Voyager in 1981, and is still present in 2008. There is also a hot spotof diameter ~2000 km, like the south polar hot spot (Kevin Baines)
28. The hexagon is a standing wave in an eastward jet whose speed is ~100 m/srelative to the clouds at neighboring latitudes. Remember that we can only measure
relative winds on Saturn, since we don’t know the rotation rate of the interior.
29. Here the eye of a typhoon. Usually they are circular. This one is a polygon. The
diameter is 50 km.
30. Infrared image of the polar vortex on Venus, compiled by Sanjay Limaye andFred Taylor. Many similarities with the Saturn vortex, but there are no convective
clouds around the outside of the Venus vortex.
31. The Venus vortex is more irregular. The terrestrial polar vortex is a cold corevortex brought on by radiative cooling during the winter.
32. New subject: The QBO on Saturn. These infrared images were taken from Earthby Glenn Orton. Notice that the band at 13°S has changed its temperature during the9 year interval.

33. Temperature difference between the equator and the band at 13°S as a functionof time. Period is about 18 years, which is less than Saturn’s orbit period of 30 years.
34. QBO on Earth. A periodic reversal of the zonal wind in the equatorial
stratosphere.
35. Cross section (latitude‐altitude) of temperatures in the equatorial stratosphereof Saturn.
36. Zonal winds computed from the thermal wind equation. The oscillation withheight is similar to the oscillation of the QBO.
37. New subject: Neptune. The first part is a five‐day movie of a solid planet. The
second takes the motion at different latitudes into account. The third part shows
how we pointed the camera to capture the spots using data that we taken 2 weeks
earlier. The fourth part show the motion of the great dark spot.
38. A model of the Great Dark Spot – the Kida vortex model. It consists of an inviscidbarotropic fluid on a plane. The outside fluid has constant vorticity qB and the fluidin the center has constant vorticity qV. [Polvani et al Science 249, 1393‐1398(1990)]. The ratio of the q’s determines the behavior of the vortex.
39. The equations were discovered by Kida.. λ is the ratio of short axis to long axis ofthe ellipse. ϕ is the angle with respect to the east‐west line. The background flow is asimple shear. There are four parameters: the two values of vorticity and the initialconditions on λ and ϕ.
40. Here is the fit to λ. Having chosen the parameters to fit the oscillation in λ, noadjustments are possible to fit the oscillation in ϕ, and still the fit is very good.
41. Here is the fit to ϕ. It captures the amplitude, the period, and the tilt of the curve,
all with no free parameters.
42. Last subject – extrasolar planets. The number grows every week and is now
close to 300. Most have been detected by the Doppler shift they give to the starlight.
The signal is large when the planet is large and close to the star.
43. An example of the velocity curve from a “hot Jupiter” The orbital period is 4.23
days, which means it would be inside the orbit of Mercury. The lower bound on themass is 0.44 times the mass of Jupiter. The uncertainty is because we don’t know theangle between the orbit and the line of sight.
44. A small fraction of the objects cross in front and behind the parent star (they“transit”), which allows us to determine the mass, radius, albedo, temperature, and alittle bit about the composition of the extrasolar planet.

45. There are some surprises. Many of the extrasolar planets are larger than themodels would predict. This is an active field.