ALBEDO FEATURES AND JOVIAN SEISMOLOGY

Schmider et al. (Schmider, F.-X., B. Mosser, and E. Fossat 1991. Astro n. Astrophy. 248, 281-291) and Mosser et al. (Mosser, B., D. Mekarnia, J. P. Maillard, J. Gay, D. Gautier, and P. Delache 1993. Astron. Astr ophys. 267, 604-622) report detection of Doppler shifts in reflected s olar radiation from Jupiter purportedly induced by p-mode oscillations of the planet. We consider the possibility that these observations ma y be recording quasiperiodic albedo features in Jupiter's atmosphere r ather than or in addition to jovian oscillations. We model the Fourier Transform Spectroscopy method of p-mode detection in detail and emplo y near-IR methane-band images of Jupiter to test the albedo feature hy pothesis. The low frequency portion (<700 mu Hz) of the Fourier spectr um presented by Mosser et al. is indeed found to be contaminated by th e photometric signal of albedo features rotating with Jupiter. Albedo features apparently are not responsible for the bulk of the higher fre quency signal attributed to p-modes. (C) 1995 Academic Press, Inc.