Effects of methane on giant planet’s UV emissions and implications for the auroral characteristics

This study reviews methods used to determine important characteristics of giant planet’s UV aurora (brightness,energy of the precipitating particles, altitude of the emission peak,. . .), based on the absorbing properties of methane and other hydrocarbons. Ultraviolet aurorae on giant planets are mostly caused by inelastic collisions between energetic magnetospheric electrons and the ambient atmospheric H2 molecules.
The auroral emission is situated close to a hydrocarbon layer and may be attenuated by methane
(CH4), ethane (C2H6) and acetylene (C2H2) at selected wavelengths. As methane is the most abundant hydrocarbon, it is the main UV absorber and attenuates the auroral emission shorward of 1350 Å. The level of absorption is used to situate the altitude/pressure level of the aurora, hence the energy of the precipitated electrons, whose penetration depth is directly related to their mean energy. Several techniques are used to determine these characteristics, from the color ratio method which measures the level of absorption from the ratio between an absorbed and an unabsorbed portion of the observed auroral spectrum, to more realistic methods which combine theoretical distributions of the precipitating electrons with altitude dependent atmospheric models. The latter models are coupled with synthetic or laboratory H2 spectra and the simulated emergent spectra are compared to observations to determine the best auroral characteristics.
Although auroral characteristics may be very variable with time and locations, several typical properties may be highlighted from these methods: the Jovian aurora is the most powerful, with brightness around 120 kR produced by electrons of mean energy 100 keV and an emission situated near the 1 lbar level ( 250 km above the 1 bar level) while Saturn’s aurora is fainter ( 10 kR), produced by electrons less than 20 keV and situated near the 0.2 lbar level ( 1100 km).