Spitzer Space Telescope - General Observer Proposal #60198


A Double Planetary Occultation By the Outer Gas Giant Neptune

Principal Investigator: James Bauer
           Institution: Jet Propulsion Laboratory

     Technical Contact: James Bauer, Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Science Category: planets 
 Observing Modes: IRAC Post-Cryo Mapping
  Hours Approved: 11.3 

Abstract:
As a large number of giant exo-planets are being characterized and discovered,
the need to understand how gas giants respond to the circumstances of variations
in insolation is becoming apparent. The gas giants in our own solar system have
not been observed in sufficient detail or over sufficiently long time scales to
understand how they respond to seasonal changes. A sensitive trace of seasonally
driven atmospheric global evolution is provided by observations of stellar
occultation events, which yield nearly instantaneous atmospheric pressure-height
profiles at critical seasonal junctures. We propose to observe two of these
occultation events of the outer gas giant Neptune, which has recently undergone
its summer solstice. The events are nearly consecutive, and viewable only from
the SST using IRAC?s sub-array capabilities and fortuitous band-pass in the
shortest wavelength channel.