Radial Variations of Suprathermal Ion Composition in Saturn's Magnetosphere

Details Radial Variations of Suprathermal Ion Composition in Saturn's Magnetosphere Radial Variations of Suprathermal Ion Composition in Saturn's Magnetosphere

May 2008

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2008agusmsm43b..02h&link_type=abstract

American Geophysical Union, Spring Meeting 2008, abstract #SM43B-02

Physics

2778 Ring Current, 6275 Saturn, 7845 Particle Acceleration

Scientific paper

Suprathermal ion composition indicates there must be several different plasma sources for Saturn's magnetosphere - Enceladus/E-ring, solar wind/interplanetary medium, and possibly Saturn's ionosphere/polar wind. Surprisingly, there is as yet little evidence that Titan plays a significant role. We use measurements from the Charge-Energy-Mass Spectrometer (CHEMS) to track abundance ratios from interplanetary space in to the orbit of Dione, inside of which the fluxes of suprathermal ions largely disappear. CHEMS, one of three sensors comprising the MIMI investigation on Cassini, determines the mass and charge state of ions in the energy per charge range 3-220 keV/e. The two charge states of helium track the solar wind source (He++) and the interplanetary pickup ion source (He+). The water products largely track the Enceladus source. H2+ may originate from the Enceladus water products or possibly from non-equilibium regions of Saturn's ionosphere (e.g., auroral regions). H3+, which is quite rare in this energy range, is presumably is a tracer of Saturn's polar wind. H+ can originate from Enceladus, the solar wind, or Saturn's ionosphere/polar wind. Although we detect N+ at about 5% of the water ion group, it currently is not clear whether its source is Titan or an inner satellite such as Enceladus. We will examine radial variations in selected ratios of these species to extract information concerning ion sources, circulation, and acceleration in Saturn's magnetosphere.

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