Open AccessMidlatitude and high‐latitude electron density profiles in the ionosphere of Saturn obtained by Cassini radio occultation observations
Author(s) -
Kliore A. J.,
Nagy A. F.,
Marouf E. A.,
Anabtawi A.,
Barbinis E.,
Fleischman D. U.,
Kahan D. S.
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
journal of geophysical research: space physics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.67
H-Index - 298
eISSN - 2156-2202
pISSN - 0148-0227
DOI - 10.1029/2008ja013900
Subject(s) - ionosphere , middle latitudes , radio occultation , latitude , electron density , saturn , atmospheric sciences , geology , occultation , astronomy , physics , geodesy , electron , planet , quantum mechanics
Nineteen new radio occultations of the ionosphere of Saturn have been obtained since 2006. Sixteen of these occultations were from midlatitude and high latitudes and thus provided important, new information of the ionosphere for these regions. A high degree of variability in the electron densities were observed, but grouping and averaging the observations as low‐, middle‐, and high‐latitude ones clearly showed that the electron densities increase with latitude. The topside scale heights also indicate small increases with latitude, but these changes are small enough so these increases may not be statistically significant.