Comparisons of Pick-up Ions Around Weakly Magnetized Bodies

Details Comparisons of Pick-up Ions Around Weakly Magnetized Bodies Comparisons of Pick-up Ions Around Weakly Magnetized Bodies

May 2001

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2001agusm..sm32d01l&link_type=abstract

American Geophysical Union, Spring Meeting 2001, abstract #SM32D-01

Other

2116 Energetic Particles, Planetary, 2152 Pickup Ions, 2732 Magnetosphere Interactions With Satellites And Rings, 2780 Solar Wind Interactions With Unmagnetized Bodies

Scientific paper

Ionized atoms or molecules created in the atmospheres around weakly magnetized bodies (planets, minor solar system bodies, or moons) are picked up in the incident flowing magnetized plasmas of the solar wind or host magnetosphere. The mass loading associated with this process affects the plasma interactions that may be supermagnetosonic (as at Venus, Mars, Pluto), or submagnetosonic (as was the case for Titan at the time of the Voyager 1 encounter). The gyro- radii of the pick-up ions in all cases are comparable to or larger than the plasma interaction region over at least some of the region. We compare and contrast pick-up ion trajectories and other properties at the Moon, Titan, Venus, Mars, and Pluto as approximated by test particles moving in fields and flows obtained with MHD treatments of the mass-loaded plasma interactions. The results demonstrate the range of different pickup ion populations that exist in the solar system. The Moon is an absorbing body that has little effect on the incident solar wind, but is a large enough absorber compared to the ion gyroradius to produce interplanetary field-controlled aysmmetries. In contrast, Venus and Mars both have an ionosphere which is an obstacle to the incident plasma. The resulting deflection of the incident flow and field makes some important differences in the low altitude pick-up ion characteristics. At Pluto the gyroradii of the pick-up ions is much larger then the size of the interaction region as a whole. Thus Pluto resembles a point source in an undisturbed external flow. Titan also has a substantial ionosphere which like Venus deflects the incident flow, though not to the same extent. These results have important implications for planning missions to these and other bodies, and in interpreting their results.

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