P51A-2046
Searching for Charon's Atmosphere
Friday, 18 December 2015
Poster Hall (Moscone South)
Joshua Kammer1, Alan Stern2, Leslie Ann Young1, Catherine Olkin1, Kimberly Ennico Smith3, Harold A Weaver Jr4, Randy Gladstone5, Joel W Parker1, Andrew Steffl6, Eric Schindhelm1, Thomas K Greathouse7, Kurt D Retherford7, Maarten H Versteeg5, Michael E Summers8, Darrell F Strobel9 and The New Horizons Science Team, (1)Southwest Research Institute Boulder, Boulder, CO, United States, (2)Southwest Research Institute, Boulder, CO, United States, (3)NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA, United States, (4)Applied Physics Laboratory Johns Hopkins, Laurel, MD, United States, (5)Southwest Research Inst, San Antonio, TX, United States, (6)Southwest Research Institute Boulder, Dept Space Studies, Boulder, CO, United States, (7)Southwest Research Institute, San Antonio, TX, United States, (8)Geo Mason-Physics & Astronomy, Fairfax, VA, United States, (9)Johns Hopkins Univ, Baltimore, MD, United States
Abstract:
There has been no compelling evidence to date for an atmosphere around Charon. However, New Horizons' successful flyby of the Pluto-Charon system provides orders of magnitude more sensitivity to detection of even a very tenuous Charon atmosphere. In particular, the Alice ultraviolet spectrograph acquired measurements of both reflected sunlight from Charon on approach of the system, as well as observing an occultation of the sun during departure through Charon's shadow. We will present the results from Alice and our analysis of these Charon observations.
