Pluto's atmosphere in plateau phase since 2015 from a stellar occultation at Devasthal

Abstract

A stellar occultation by Pluto was observed on 6 June 2020 with the 1.3-m and 3.6-m telescopes located at Devasthal, Nainital, India, using imaging systems in the I and H bands, respectively. From this event, we derive a surface pressure for Pluto's atmosphere of $p_{\mathrm{surf}}=12.23_{-0.38}^{+0.65}$~$\mu$bar. This shows that Pluto's atmosphere is in a plateau phase since mid-2015, a result which is in excellent agreement with the Pluto volatile transport model of Meza et al. (2019}. This value does not support the pressure decrease reported by independent teams, based on occultations observed in 2018 and 2019, see Young et al. (2021} and Arimatu et al. (2020), respectively.

8 pages, 3 figures, revised and accepted version for ApJL

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Cited by in corpus (6)

• Stellar occultations by Trans-Neptunian Objects
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• Reconciling results of 2019 and 2020 stellar occultations on Pluto's atmosphere. New constraints from both the 5 September 2019 event and consistency analysis
• History of ARIES: A premier research institute in the area of observational sciences
• Changes in Pluto's Atmosphere Based on Stellar Occultation Data from 2017 to 2023
• Pathway to Devasthal Astronomical Observatory, ARIES