The disappearance and reappearance of Titan's detached haze layer
Résumé
Titan's extended haze is a prominent and long-lived feature of the atmosphere that encompasses a rich variety of chemical, dynamical and microphysical processes operating over a wide range of temporal and spatial scales. The so-called 'detached' haze layer is easily seen in high-resolution short-wave (near-UV and blue wavelengths) images and is a consequence of a nearly global (outside of the winter polar hood region) layer depleted in aerosol content. It was first seen near 350 Km altitude in Voyager images (Rages and Pollack, 1983) and later observed by the Cassini ISS cameras (Porco et al., 2005; West et al., 2010) and UV stellar occultation profiles (Koskinen et al. 2011). A series of Cassini images from 2009 to 2010 revealed what appears to be a seasonally related altitude variation with remarkable regularity (comparing the Voyager and Cassini images). The drop in altitude is most rapid at equinox. Here we report on images of the upper haze layer over the period 2012 to early 2016. In the early part of this period the detached haze continued to drop in altitude and disappeared. There was no evidence for it beginning late in 2012 and extending to early 2016 when it was again detected with very low contrast at an altitude near 500 Km. We document this behavior and examine the evolution of the haze as functions of both latitude and time. These new details put additional constraints on models that attempt to account for the existence of the detached layer. Part of this work was done by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology. References: Rages, K., and J. B. Pollack (1983), Vertical distribution of scattering hazes in Titan's upper atmosphere, Icarus, 55, 50-62, doi:10.1016/0019-1035 (83)90049-0; Porco, C. C. et al., Imaging Titan from the Cassini Spacecraft, Nature 434, 159-168 (2005); West, R. A. et al., The evolution of Titans detached haze layer near equinox in 2009", Geophys. Res. Lett. 38, L06204, doi:10.1029/2011GL046843, 2011; Koskinen T.T., et al., The mesosphere and lower thermosphere of Titan revealed by Cassini/UVIS stellar occultations, Icarus 216 507534, 2011.