The Cassini View of Saturn's Magnetosphere

Details The Cassini View of Saturn's Magnetosphere The Cassini View of Saturn's Magnetosphere

Aug 2005

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2005dps....37.6501b&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, DPS meeting #37, #65.01; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 37, p.769

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

Scientific paper

The first year of orbital operations of the Cassini spacecraft around Saturn has revealed a much more accurate view of Saturn's magnetosphere than we had before, thanks to two key elements:
1 -- The comprehensive suite of Cassini Magnetosphere and Plasmas instruments (MAG, CAPS, MIMI, RPWS, CDA, and UVIS), which is accessible to all co-investigators through the recently-developed MAPS-KP data base, provides a detailed coverage of fields, plasma populations and wave modes;
2 -- The orbital tour just started to give us access to the 3-D structure of Saturn's magnetosphere and its large temporal variability. We shall describe some of the most interesting features of this emerging new view of Saturn's magnetosphere, which include:
- a global dynamics strongly influenced by the solar wind interaction, which produces specific features in the radio and auroral emissions and in the role played by particle injections from the tail,
- a very dynamic inner plasma torus, dominated by water-group ions and likely controlled by its coupling to Saturn's neutral oxygen cloud, which displays a host of radial transport signatures,
- a very interesting rings' plasma environment, subject to electrodynamic coupling phenomena between ring and dust particles, charged particles and the tenuous rings atmosphere,
- Titan's magnetospheric interactions, described in unprecedented detail, and Titan's ionosphere itself, with its complex ion chemistry,
- and the rich variety of satellite magnetospheric interactions, whose study led to the discovery of an unexpected atmosphere at Enceladus. Overall, Cassini reveals to us a very unique magnetosphere, which interacts with all components of the Saturn system - atmospheres, satellites, rings, neutral clouds - in different ways and contributes to a really interdisciplinary investigation of this fascinating world.

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