Investigating the plasma environment at Titan's orbit

Details Investigating the plasma environment at Titan's orbit Investigating the plasma environment at Titan's orbit

Dec 2010

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2010agufmsm11c1761s&link_type=abstract

American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2010, abstract #SM11C-1761

Physics

[2740] Magnetospheric Physics / Magnetospheric Configuration And Dynamics, [2756] Magnetospheric Physics / Planetary Magnetospheres, [5780] Planetary Sciences: Fluid Planets / Tori And Exospheres, [6281] Planetary Sciences: Solar System Objects / Titan

Scientific paper

Prior to Cassini's arrival at Saturn, nitrogen ions were thought to dominate heavy plasma in Saturn's magnetosphere and that Titan's atmosphere was the source of this nitrogen. Therefore, the presence of a Titan nitrogen torus was anticipated. However, it is now known water-group ions dominate Saturn's heavy ion plasma. While nitrogen ions have been detected beyond the orbit of Rhea, they appear to be originating from the Enceladus plumes with little nitrogen plasma detected in the magnetosphere near Titan's orbit. These results appear inconsistent with the expectation that Titan’s dense relatively unprotected atmosphere should provide a significant source of heavy particles to Saturn’s magnetosphere. This inconsistency suggests that the plasma environment at Titan’s orbit is much more complex than originally anticipated. In this talk, we expand on our previous research that categorizes the plasma environments near Titan to include all locations along Titan’s orbit. Using these categories, we develop characteristic plasma spectra of each type of environment and use these results in a 3D Monte Carlo model to examine the extent to which Titan could possibly be generating a neutral particle torus.

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