PDS: The Planetary Atmospheres Node
Cover Page/Proposal Summary
Planetary Atmospheres
Cover Page/Proposal Summary
ROSS-99 NRA 99-OSS-01
Date Due: 5/3/99
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This proposal shall be used and disclosed for evaluation purposes only, and a copy of this Government notice shall be applied to any reproduction or abstract thereof. Any authorized restrictive notices that the submitter places on this proposal shall also be strictly complied with. Disclosure of this proposal for any reason outside the Government evaluation purposes shall be made only to the extent authorized by the Government. |
| Proposal Type: New Proposal |
| Proposal Category: Atmosphere Structures and Particles |
| Major Equipment Proposal? No |
| Do you intend to submit an Education/Public Outreach (E/PO) proposal? No |
| Proposal Title: |
| Shoemaker-Levy 9 Revisited: quantitative analysis of atmospheric data for the first five hours, using coupled ballistic Monte-Carlo and radiative-hydrodynamic models. |
| Abbreviated Proposal Title: |
| Shoemaker-Levy 9 Revisited. |
| Principal Investigator: |
| Dr.
Drake Deming CODE 693 NASA Goddard Space Flight Ctr. Greenbelt, MD 20771 Phone: 301-286-6519 Fax: 301-286-1683 E-mail: drake@tecate.gsfc.nasa.gov |
| Signature | Date |
| _____________________________________ | ____________ |
| Co-Investigators and Collaborators: | |||
| Type | Name | Affiliation | |
| Sci Co-I | Dr. Joseph Harrington | Cornell University | jh@oobleck.tn.cornell.edu |
Proposal Summary:
We have developed a radiative-hydrodynamic model for the Shoemaker-Levy-9 plume "splashback" which produced the brightest portion of the SL-9 infrared emissions. The model is based on a ballistic Monte-Carlo simulation of the ejecta plumes, starting from a parameterized power-law distribution of ejecta velocities. The output of the ballistic plume model is coupled to the Zeus-3D hydrocode, which we have modified to include radiative damping in the gray approximation. This modified code has been fully tested against a suite of hydrodynamic and radiative-hydrodynamic test problems, and then applied to the SL-9 splashback problem. The model successfully reproduces the appearance of the plumes on the jovian limb as observed by HST, and the morphology of the infrared light curves (including the appearance of secondary maxima, or "bounces"). The model also allows us to identify the nature of several as-yet-unexplained phenomena. We propose to incorporate wavelength-dependent opacities into the radiative-hydrodynamic code, and to produce specific models for each SL-9 collision, by comparison with spectrophotometric data. We will archive these models in the Planetary Data System for community use.
