Saturn - Tropospheric ammonia and nitrogen

Photochemical calculations based on recent data on the Saturn temperature structure and Lyman-alpha albedo indicate that detectable amounts of gaseous ammonia may exist between 20 and 35 km above the cloud tops. An instrument that might be able to observe this gas is the spectrometer on board the International Ultraviolet Explorer satellite. The calculations also yield a maximum nitrogen mixing ratio at the cloud tops between 1.8 x 10 to the -10th to 6 x 10 to the -8th by volume, depending upon the degree of supersaturation of ammonia and hydrazine. Even the lower limit could produce intense emissions if electrical discharges such as those observed on Jupiter by Voyager are also present on Saturn, or if high energy particles penetrate to the Saturnian troposphere.