Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astrophysics
Scientific paper
Nov 1994
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1994a%26a...291..657k&link_type=abstract
Astronomy and Astrophysics (ISSN 0004-6361), vol. 291, no. 2, p. 657-663
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astrophysics
21
Deimos, Ejecta, Interplanetary Dust, Mars (Planet), Meteoroids, Phobos, Grain Size, Mars Surface, Particle Size Distribution, Toruses, Velocity Distribution
Scientific paper
The dust complex around Mars formed by the impact ejecta from the surfaces of its satellites is studied. As found by Juhasz et al. (1993), the different-sized particles of each moon generate several populations with quite dissimilar features. Relatively large grains are concentrated in a toroidal belt along the satellite's orbit ('torus', or 'disk'). The intermediate-sized debris, though also fill a disklike volume, are rapidly lost by the collisions with martian surface and hence are not abundant ('subdisk'). The fine submicron-sized dust is strongly affected by the electromagnetic forces and solar wind streams and would form an extended envelope around Mars ('halo'). Of these populations, the first should dominate the mass density and perhaps the optical depth of the dust complex. We constructed a model of the disks/tori around both satellites, considering successively: incoming meteoroidal flux, ejecta size and velocity distributions, dynamics of orbiting particles, and reaccretion of grains onto the moons' surfaces. The mass and number densities decrease slowly with distance from the satellite's orbit, so that the 'effective' semi-sizes of the torus' section are half the radius of the moon's orbit. The torus of Deimos should be more extended than that of Phobos.
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