Physics
Scientific paper
Apr 2003
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2003eaeja.....7489k&link_type=abstract
EGS - AGU - EUG Joint Assembly, Abstracts from the meeting held in Nice, France, 6 - 11 April 2003, abstract #7489
Physics
Scientific paper
Spacecraft investigations during the last ten years have vastly improved our knowledge about dust in the Jovian system. All Galilean satellites, and probably all smaller satellites as well, are sources of dust in the Jovian system. In-situ measurements with the dust detectors on board the Ulysses and Galileo spacecraft have for the first time demonstrated the electromagnetic interaction of charged dust grains with the interplanetary magnetic field and with a planetary magnetosphere. Jupiter's magnetosphere acts as a giant mass-velocity spectrometer for charged 10-nanometer dust grains. These grains are released from Jupiter's moon Io with a typical rate of ˜ 1 kg s-1. The seven-year long record of Galileo in-situ dust measurements revealed significant variations of the fluxes of the dust stream particles with Jovian local time which are caused by the dawn-dusk asymmetry of the Io plasma torus. The streams probe the plasma conditions in the torus, and they can be used as a potential monitor of Io's volcanic plume activity. The joint Galileo-Cassini dust measurements at Jupiter imply stream particle speeds up to 400 km s-1. All Galilean satellites are surrounded by tenuous impact-generated clouds of mostly sub-micrometer ejecta grains. Jovian rings not only exist in the well-known region of the main and gossamer rings but also much farther out. Very tenuous rings composed of mostly micron-sized grains have been detected in-situ in the region between the Galilean moons and further beyond out to ˜ 250 R_J from the planet. The dust densities there are much too low to allow detection with imaging techniques. The measurements have demonstrated that impact-ejecta derived from hypervelocity impacts onto satellites are the major constituent of dusty planetary rings. On 5 November 2002 Galileo traversed Jupiter's gossamer rings for the first time and had a close flyby at Amalthea. Several hundred dust impacts have been detected during this passage with the dust detector on board. The in-situ dust measurements provide information about the physical properties of the dust population not accessible with imaging techniques. They directly provide dust spatial densities, grain sizes and impact speeds, this way allowing one to constrain the forces dominating grain dynamics in the ring. We review the in-situ dust measurements at Jupiter and present first results from Galileo's gossamer ring passage.
Gruen Eberhard
Krueger Hans
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