The interior of Iapetus: Constraints provided by the solar wind interaction

Details The interior of Iapetus: Constraints provided by the solar wind interaction The interior of Iapetus: Constraints provided by the solar wind interaction

Dec 2008

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2008agufm.p31c..08l&link_type=abstract

American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2008, abstract #P31C-08

Other

6024 Interiors (8147), 6025 Interactions With Solar Wind Plasma And Fields, 6280 Saturnian Satellites

Scientific paper

Iapetus is Saturn's third largest and most distant regular satellite. This moon is best known for its unique hemispheric albedo asymmetry and the kilometers-high ridge circling its equator, but observations made during Cassini's 2007 flyby show another of the moon's unusual features. The spacecraft approached Iapetus from downstream and stayed to the side until it had passed upstream, never having entered the moon's geometric wake. The interplanetary magnetic field's (IMF) orientation was such that during the approach, Cassini's trajectory took it towards a region where it would be magnetically connected to the moon. During this time, the Cassini plasma wave spectrometer observed low-frequency waves that were unique to the Iapetus encounter and strongly correlated with the spacecraft's distance from the moon. When Cassini passed into the space where the IMF should have magnetically connected it to the moon, the magnetometer observed a strong perturbation of the magnetic field. When we extrapolate that perturbation towards Iapetus, we find that the IMF rotated to completely avoid intersecting the moon. This suggests that the solar wind plasma was deflected by Iapetus. We have analyzed the perturbation and we find that it can be caused by neither an inert body nor a mass-loading source. Such a perturbation could be caused by either an internal, electrically-conducting ocean or remanent magnetization. Iapetus' density of 1100 kg m-3 allows for the possibility of an interior ocean and current models of Iapetus' interior allow for the possibility of a rocky core 500-700 km across (Castillo-Rogez et al., 2008). That rocky core could support the needed remanent magnetization, but the difficulty is in finding a mechanism to provide the source magnetic field.

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