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Tenuous Atmospheres in the Solar System

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Handbook of Exoplanets

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Abstract

Current knowledge of tenuous Solar System atmospheres is reviewed, with emphasis at the collisionally thick atmospheres of Pluto, Triton, and Io. A common sharing of atmospheres is that they are dominantly supported by seasonally varying sublimation/condensation exchanges with the surface. Io’s atmosphere is still fundamentally different from Pluto and Triton in that it presents large horizontal variability. Pluto’s atmosphere, and to a lesser extent Triton’s, are reduced (∼10 μbar class) and colder versions of Titan’s, including in particular a coupled nitrogen-methane chemistry that leads to the production of hydrocarbons, nitriles, and haze. Albeit similar in terms of surface pressure and temperature, Pluto’s and Triton’s atmospheres show marked differences in terms of thermal structure and detailed composition – that are amenable to differences in the ∼20 times smaller atmospheric methane mixing ratio on Triton versus Pluto – itself related to a smaller abundance in the ice phase. Io’s dominantly SO2, nanobar-class atmosphere has immediate support mostly from sublimating surface frost, with a contribution from volcanic plumes. The latter are also important in feeding the atmosphere with nonvolatile gases including SO, S2, NaCl, and KCl. The gas temperature, vertical structure, and dynamics of Io’s atmosphere remain poorly understood.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    (Evidence for “pure” methane in addition to methane diluted in N2 is found in Pluto’s spectra. Given the phase diagram of CH4-N2 mixtures, pure CH4 ice is not thermodynamically possible in the presence of an N2 atmosphere, so that “pure CH4” actually refers to a CH4-dominated CH4-N2 mixture (Trafton 2015).)

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratoire d’Etudes Spatiales et d’Instrumentation en Astrophysique (LESIA), Observatoire de Paris, 5, place Jules Janssen, 92195, Meudon, France

    Emmanuel Lellouch

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  1. Emmanuel Lellouch
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Correspondence to Emmanuel Lellouch .

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  1. Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias , La Laguna, Spain

    Hans J. Deeg

  2. Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, La Laguna, Spain

    Juan Antonio Belmonte

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  1. Universidad del País Vasco, Bilbao, Spain

    Agustín Sanchez Lavega

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Lellouch, E. (2018). Tenuous Atmospheres in the Solar System. In: Deeg, H., Belmonte, J. (eds) Handbook of Exoplanets . Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-30648-3_47-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-30648-3_47-1

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