On the Inference of the Physical Properties of the Jovian Atmosphere from Photometry of Eclipses of the Galilean Satellites

Book excerpt: The frequent eclipses of the Galilean satellites provide an extremely simple yet extremely powerful method for monitoring the physical structure of the Jovian atmosphere in time, latitude, and longitude. In this paper, all theoretical and observational problems involved in the use of these eclipses to scan the Jovian atmosphere are discussed in detail. It is shown that a rather complete knowledge of the structure of the Jovian atmosphere immediately above the cloud layer may be obtained from multicolor photometry of the refraction tails of the ingress light curves of the satellites. The relevant observational data may be obtained readily using currently available ground-based astronomical equipment. This technique for inferring the physical structure of a planetary atmosphere may be applied to Saturn also. In that case, the relatively infrequent eclipses of Titan may be utilized.