The distribution of Titan's high-altitude (out to ˜50,000 km) exosphere from energetic neutral atom (ENA) measurements by Cassini/INCA

Details The distribution of Titan's high-altitude (out to ˜50,000 km) exosphere from energetic neutral atom (ENA) measurements by Cassini/INCA The distribution of Titan's high-altitude (out to ˜50,000 km) exosphere from energetic neutral atom (ENA) measurements by Cassini/INCA

Jan 2012

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2012p%26ss...60..107b&link_type=abstract

Planetary and Space Science, Volume 60, Issue 1, p. 107-114.

Computer Science

1

Scientific paper

We report observations of Titan's high-altitude exosphere detected out to about 50,000 km altitude. The observations were made by the Ion Neutral Camera (INCA) on board the Cassini spacecraft. INCA detects energetic neutral atoms (ENA) that are formed when the ambient magnetospheric ions charge exchange with Titan's neutral atmosphere and exosphere. We find that Titan's exospheric H2 distribution follows closely a full Chamberlain distribution including ballistic, escaping and satellite distributions. As expected, neutral densities are dominated by a satellite distribution above about 10,000 km. The maximum detectable extent of the exosphere (˜50,000 km) coincides with the radius of the Hill sphere of gravitational influence from Saturn. While we find no direct indications of a neutral Titan torus with densities greater than about 1000 cm-3, we observe interesting asymmetries in the distribution that warrants further investigation. Based on these findings we compute the average precipitating ENA flux to be about 5×106 keV/(cm2 s), or 8×10-3 erg/(cm2 s), which is directly comparable to that of precipitating energetic ions (Sittler, et al., 2009) and slightly higher than that of solar EUV (Tobiska, 2004). Thus, the energy deposited by precipitating ENAs must also be taken into consideration when studying the energy balance of Titan's thermosphere.

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