Saturn Magnetosphere Ion Erosion by Titan: Penetration and Loss of Water Group Ions in Upper Atmosphere

Details Saturn Magnetosphere Ion Erosion by Titan: Penetration and Loss of Water Group Ions in Upper Atmosphere Saturn Magnetosphere Ion Erosion by Titan: Penetration and Loss of Water Group Ions in Upper Atmosphere

Dec 2006

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2006agufm.p13a0161h&link_type=abstract

American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2006, abstract #P13A-0161

Physics

5405 Atmospheres (0343, 1060), 5410 Composition (1060, 3672), 5421 Interactions With Particles And Fields, 5435 Ionospheres (2459), 5443 Magnetospheres (2756)

Scientific paper

The flux of energetic ions entering Titan's upper atmosphere from Saturn's rotating magnetosphere is a source of oxygen for the oxygen poor atmosphere. Such ion penetration also contributes to thermosphere heating and atmosphere loss through sputtering. A recent analysis of ion measurements made by the Cassini Plasma Spectrometer (CAPS) during the TA flyby showed that magnetosphere O+ decreased inside a gyrodiameter of the exobase as a result of its absorption by the atmosphere (1). Using CAPS ion measurements made during the T5 flyby, an analysis of the subsequent penetration of such heavy ions in Titan's thermosphere is described. T5 is well suited to study the penetration of magnetosphere ions because the viewing directions of the spectrometer anodes did not allow entry of heavy, energetic pickup ions, permitting the analysis of heavy magnetospheric ions alone. Consequently, heavy magnetospheric ions in the 5-10 keV range were observed to precipitate more than 300 km below the exobase. A detailed time-of-flight (TOF) analysis of the heavy ion spectra revealed the penetrating ions were water group ions; namely O+, OH+ and H2O+. The absence of a known source of water ions near Titan's orbit suggests that the ions may have been transported outward to the moon by the magnetosphere, which may be supplied by sources such as the water plumes of Enceladus. The ion precipitation observations made in the upper atmosphere during the T5 flyby are used to obtain an estimate of the local oxygen absorption rate, while a hybrid plasma interaction model is used to extend the estimate to a global scale. (1) Hartle et al., Geophys. Res. Lett., 33, L08201, 2006.

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