Cassini Imaging of Io's Visible Aurora

Details Cassini Imaging of Io's Visible Aurora Cassini Imaging of Io's Visible Aurora

Apr 2003

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2003eaeja....12759g&link_type=abstract

EGS - AGU - EUG Joint Assembly, Abstracts from the meeting held in Nice, France, 6 - 11 April 2003, abstract #12759

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Scientific paper

Io is the only moon in the solar system known to display visible atmospheric emissions that would be bright enough to be seen with the naked eye by a hypothetical human visitor to the jovian system. Earlier imaging of Io's colorful aurorae [1,2,3], obtained by the Galileo spacecraft while the satellite was in eclipse, left a number of questions unanswered. The temporal behavior of the emissions was difficult to discern from the occasional glimpses afforded by Galileo. The identities of the emitting species were poorly known. Unlike the far-ultraviolet emissions from Io's atmosphere that closely tracked the tangent points of Jupiter's magnetic field lines [5,6], the brightest visible glows were clearly linked to actively erupting volcanic plumes. Cassini, with its fully functioning high-gain antenna, near-ultraviolet sensitivity and better spectral resolution, was able to fill many of the gaps in our knowledge of these mysterious phenomena [6]. Cassini monitored Io's appearance over entire eclipses, documenting temporal changes on time scales of minutes. These data help constrain the degree of atmospheric collapse during eclipse and establish the relationship of the emissions to the changing orientation of the jovian magnetic field. Cassini detected glows at previously unknown wavelengths, providing new evidence of molecular SO2 emission and other atmospheric constituents. The spatial distribution of the glows indicates the presence of a giant volcanic plume near Io's north pole at the time of the observations and also reveals stratification of the satellite's tenuous atmosphere. [1] McEwen et al., Icarus 135, 181, 1998. [2] Geissler et al., Science 285, 870, 1999. [3] Geissler et al., JGR 106, 26137, 2001. [4] Roesler et al., Science 283, 353, 1999. [5] Retherford et al., JGR 105, 27157, 2000. [6] Porco et al., Science, in prep. 2003.

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