2022

Triton's atmosphere from the 5 October 2017 stellar occultation

Constraints on the structure and seasonal variations of Triton's atmosphere, derived from a multi-site stellar-occultation campaign. Published in A&A (2022).

Observational contribution to a multi-site stellar-occultation campaign targeting Neptune’s moon Triton on 5 October 2017. Light-curve fits from the event, combined with previous observations spanning decades, place fresh constraints on the thermal structure of Triton’s tenuous atmosphere and on its seasonal variations as Neptune’s orbit modulates insolation.

Published as Marques Oliveira, J., …, Scalia, C., … — Constraints on the structure and seasonal variations of Triton’s atmosphere from the 5 October 2017 stellar occultation and previous observations, A&A, 2022.

The project is a reminder of how much information can still be extracted from carefully timed ground-based photometry: a few stations, a stopwatch-precise prediction and clean reduction yield atmospheric profiles that no flyby has revisited since Voyager 2.