ABSTRACT

The massive eruption at 40°N on Saturn in December 2010 has produced significant and lasting effects in the northern hemisphere on temperature and species abundance. When the storm clouds erupted into the troposphere of Saturn they were sheared and over the next 3 months wrapped around the entire planet. This eruption sent waves into the stratosphere, which caused significant heating. In 2011 and 2012 the Cassini spacecraft observed the effects of the storm over many wavelengths on multiple occasions. The Composite Infrared Spectrometer (CIRS), on Cassini, “chased” the storm in order to follow the unexpected changes in the normally quiet stratosphere. This talk will discuss the “beacons” in the stratosphere that resulted from the storm, how these beacons changed over time, the changes in the amounts of hydrocarbons, and what effects Cassini was able to “see” in the northern hemisphere long after the storm clouds subsided.

About the Speaker:

Brigette Hesman is an Assistant Research Scientist at the University of Maryland working at NASA’s GSFC on the Cassini (in orbit around Saturn) and New Horizons (en route to Pluto) missions. She focuses her research on the chemical composition of giant planet atmospheres in the Solar System. She earned her PhD from the University of Saskatchewan in 2005 and started as a post-doctoral researcher at Goddard that same year. She has worked as part of the Cassini’s Composite Infrared Spectrometer (CIRS) team doing operations and science. In addition, she has been a part of New Horizon’s Linear Etalon Imaging Spectral Array (LEISA) team providing operations and calibration support in advance of the Pluto flyby in 2015. Brigette's recent research has focused on using infrared spectra to investigate the effects Saturn's storm systems have on Saturn's atmosphere.