Clouds and Hazes in the Atmospheres of Triton and Pluto

Clouds and hazes are abundant in the thin and cold atmospheres of Triton and Pluto, where they are thought to be produced by interactions between atmospheric gases and ultraviolet photons from the Sun and those scattered by the local interstellar medium.

These interactions lead to a rich network of chemical reactions that produces higher order hydrocarbons and nitriles that condense out to form ice clouds, and ultimately complex haze particles that rain down onto the surface that impact the atmospheric thermal structure, gas chemistry, and surface evolution.

In this chapter, we will review the observational evidence for clouds and hazes in the atmospheres of Triton and Pluto and theoretical interpretations thereof, and the emerging set of experiments aiming to produce Triton and Pluto clouds and hazes in the lab to learn about them in detail.

Peter Gao, Kazumasa Ohno

Comments: 18 pages, 9 figures, 1 table. To be published as Chapter 6 of “Triton and Pluto: The Long Lost Twins of Active Worlds”, Eds. Adrienn Luspay-Kuti and Kathleen Mandt, IOP Publishing
Subjects: Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP)
Cite as: arXiv:2411.12031 [astro-ph.EP] (or arXiv:2411.12031v1 [astro-ph.EP] for this version)
https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2411.12031
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Submission history
From: Peter Gao
[v1] Mon, 18 Nov 2024 20:07:19 UTC (28,178 KB)
https://arxiv.org/abs/2411.12031

Astrobiology