The Mimas ghost revisited - an analysis of the electron flux and electron microsignatures observed in the vicinity of Mimas at Saturn

Details The Mimas ghost revisited - an analysis of the electron flux and electron microsignatures observed in the vicinity of Mimas at Saturn The Mimas ghost revisited - an analysis of the electron flux and electron microsignatures observed in the vicinity of Mimas at Saturn

Nov 1983

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1983jgr....88.8755c&link_type=abstract

Journal of Geophysical Research (ISSN 0148-0227), vol. 88, Nov. 1, 1983, p. 8755-8764. Research sponsored by the Aerospace Corp.

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

24

Electron Flux Density, Magnetospheric Electron Density, Mimas, Spectral Signatures, Absorption Spectra, Magnetospheric Proton Density, Planetary Magnetospheres, Planetology, Saturn Satellites, Spaceborne Astronomy, Voyager 2 Spacecraft

Scientific paper

An analysis of the electron-absorption signature observed by the cosmic-ray system on Voyager 2 near the orbit of Mimas is presented. It is found that these observations cannot be explained as the absorption signature of Mimas. By combining Pioneer 11 and Voyager 2 measurements of the electron flux at Mimas's orbit (L = 3.1), an electron spectrum is found in which most of the flux above about 100 keV is concentrated near 1 to 3 MeV. This spectral form is qualitatively consistent with the bandpass filter model of Van Allen et al. (1980). The expected Mimas absorption signature is calculated from this spectrum neglecting radial diffusion. Since no Mimas absorption signature was observed in the inbound Voyager 2 data, a lower limit on the diffusion coefficient for MeV electrons at L = 3.1 of D greater than 10 to the -8th sq Saturn radii/sec is obtained. With a diffusion coefficient this large, both the Voyager 2 and the Pioneer 11 small-scale electron-absorption-signature observations in Mimas's orbit are enigmatic. Thus the mechanism for producing these signatures is referred to as the Mimas ghost. A cloud of material in orbit with Mimas may account for the observed electron signature if the cloud is at least 1-percent opaque to electrons across a region extending over a few hundred kilometers.

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