Abundances and Energetics for Water Group and Molecular Oxygen Ions in Saturn's Magnetosphere After 24 Cassini Orbits

Details Abundances and Energetics for Water Group and Molecular Oxygen Ions in Saturn's Magnetosphere After 24 Cassini Orbits Abundances and Energetics for Water Group and Molecular Oxygen Ions in Saturn's Magnetosphere After 24 Cassini Orbits

Sep 2006

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2006dps....38.4107m&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, DPS meeting #38, #41.07; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 38, p.559

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Scientific paper

We present magnetospheric ion composition results from the Cassini Plasma Spectrometer (CAPS) for the first 24 orbits of Cassini about Saturn. Apoapses of these orbits have local times between 3 and 8 MLT. Data from the Ion Mass Spectrometer (IMS) are summed to achieve better statistics and to bring out features that are otherwise difficult to resolve from an individual orbital pass. We highlight some of our results here. As described previously, water group ions (O+, OH+, H2O+, H3O+; or collectively, W+) dominate over H+ in the inner plasmasphere (Young et al., 2005; Sittler et al., 2005). We find that on average, this dominance persists out to 20 Saturn Radii (RS), and although weakening rapidly, W+ ions are observed out to 25 RS. The density of hydronium, which is the dominant W+ species within 4 RS, peaks at 5 RS and rapidly drops with an radial length scale of 1 RS; hydronium is no longer detectable beyond 14 RS. The W+ plasma has both a core component and a higher-energy tail. The density ratio of the tail to the core increases (length scale of 1.3 RS) out to 10 RS and then flattens out to a constant factor of 0.1. The mean core energy increases by a factor of 20 between 4 and 20 RS, nearly following rigid co-rotation. However, the mean tail energy is flat between 4 and 15 RS, at 3 keV and then increases by a factor of 2 between 15 and 20 RS, indicating a separate dynamic history from the core. Finally, we detect molecular oxygen (O2+) out to 10 RS. At 4.5 RS, the O2+ density is 5% of the W+ density, and the O2+ density drops relative to W+ with a radial length scale of 2 RS.

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