Dusty Plasma observed in the E-ring and near Enceladus

Details Dusty Plasma observed in the E-ring and near Enceladus Dusty Plasma observed in the E-ring and near Enceladus

Dec 2009

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2009agufmsm32b..03m&link_type=abstract

American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2009, abstract #SM32B-03

Other

[5737] Planetary Sciences: Fluid Planets / Magnetospheres, [5759] Planetary Sciences: Fluid Planets / Rings And Dust

Scientific paper

We report a dusty plasma environment observed near the Enceladus and E-ring region in Saturnian magnetosphere. The ion and electron number densities and the temperatures are obtained by the RPWS Langmuir probe (LP) during three Enceladus plume and associated E-ring encounters of the Cassini spacecraft. We find that the electron and ion densities increase as Cassini approaches the E-ring. As Cassini encounters the equatorial E-ring within a distance from the equator Z = ~ ± 20,000 km, the electron density gradually decrease while the ion density is continues to increase. This signature seems to be due to the negatively charged dust, which has been observed in the E-ring region (Wahlund et al., 2005, 2009). In the Enceladus plume both the ion and electron densities become very large (up to a few 105 cm-3 for the ions and at least few 104 cm-3 for the electrons). On the other hand, the number densities of the electrons are still significantly lower than the ion number densities. That is, the charged dust grains are still important in the plume region. The electron density drops in the wake of Enceladus. However, the ion density remains unaffected, which is not expected for a signature of the wake region behind Enceladus. In addition, there are no Langmuir probe observations indicating an ionosphere around Enceladus. Furthermore, near the Enceladus plume region the ion velocity is close to the Keplerian speed rather than the co-rotating plasma speed. This signature is consistent with the ion drag effect by the potential of the negatively charged dust as suggested for the E-ring. We also show the ion velocity in the inner magnetosphere and discuss the dust-plasma interaction and electrodynamics in the plasma disk near the E-ring and in the Enceladus plume region.

Affiliated with

Also associated with

No associations

Rating

Dusty Plasma observed in the E-ring and near Enceladus does not yet have a rating. At this time, there are no reviews or comments for this scientific paper.

If you have personal experience with Dusty Plasma observed in the E-ring and near Enceladus, we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and Dusty Plasma observed in the E-ring and near Enceladus will most certainly appreciate the feedback.

Rate now

Comments { 0 }

Profile ID: LFWR-SCP-O-1878741