Midlatitude and high-latitude electron density profiles in the ionosphere of Saturn obtained by Cassini radio occultation observations

Abstract

Nineteen new radio occultations of the ionosphere of Saturn have been obtained since 2006. Sixteen of these occultations were from midlatitude and high latitudes and thus provided important, new information of the ionosphere for these regions. A high degree of variability in the electron densities were observed, but grouping and averaging the observations as low-, middle-, and high-latitude ones clearly showed that the electron densities increase with latitude. The topside scale heights also indicate small increases with latitude, but these changes are small enough so these increases may not be statistically significant. Copyright 2009 by the American Geophysical Union.