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Steven Levin

Publications and source records attributed to Steven Levin.

3 records
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRS2021

Local Time Dependence of Jupiter's Polar Auroral Emissions Observed by Juno UVS

Auroral brightness and color ratio imagery, captured using the Juno mission's Ultraviolet Spectrograph, display intense emissions poleward of Jupiter's northern main emission, and these are split into two distinctly different spectral or “color ratio” regimes. The most poleward region, designated the “swirl region” by Grodent et al. (2003), https://doi.org/10.1029/2003ja010017, exhibits a high color ratio, while low color ratio emissions are found within the collar around the swirl region but still poleward of the main emission. We confirm the apparent strong magnetospheric local time control within the polar collar (Grodent et al., 2003, https://doi.org/10.1029/2003ja010017), with the dusk side bright “active region” emissions extending from ∼11 to 22 hr of magnetospheric local time. These bright emissions dim by at least an order of magnitude between ∼0 and 11 hr magnetospheric local time, in the midnight to dawn side “dark region.” This magnetospheric local time structure holds true even when the entire northern oval is located on the night side of the planet (in ionospheric local time), a geometry unstudied prior to Juno, as it is unobservable from Earth. The swirl region brightens at ionospheric dawn (∼5–7 ionospheric local time) and diminishes or completely disappears at ionospheric local times of ∼20–22 hr. Finally, the southern auroral polar emissions appear to share all of the local time dependencies of its northern counterpart, but at a reduced intensity

Thomas Greathouse↗
NASA NTRS2020

Residual Study: Testing Jupiter Atmosphere Models Against Juno MWR Observations

The Juno spacecraft provides unique close-up views of Jupiter underneath the synchrotron radiation belts while circling Jupiter in its 53-day orbits. The microwave radiometer (MWR) onboard measures Jupiter thermal radiation at wavelengths between 1.37 and 50 cm, penetrating the atmosphere to a pressure of a few hundred bars and greater. The mission provides the first measurements of Jupiter's deep atmosphere, down to ~250 bars in pressure, constraining the vertical distributions of its kinetic temperature and constituents. As a result, vertical structure models of Jupiter's atmosphere may now be tested by comparison with MWR data. Taking into account the MWR beam patterns and observation geometries, we test several published Jupiter atmospheric models against MWR data. Our residual analysis confirms Li et al.'s (2017, https://doi.org/10.1002/2017GL073159) result that ammonia depletion persists down to 50–60 bars where ground-based Very Large Array was not able to observe. We also present an extension of the study that iteratively improves the input model and generates Jupiter brightness temperature maps which best match the MWR data. A feature of Juno's north-to-south scanning approach is that latitudinal structure is more easily obtained than longitudinal, and the creation of optimum two-dimensional maps is addressed in this approach.

Zhimeng Zhang↗