Reconnection at the magnetopause of Saturn: perspectives from FTE and magnetosphere size

Details Reconnection at the magnetopause of Saturn: perspectives from FTE and magnetosphere size Reconnection at the magnetopause of Saturn: perspectives from FTE and magnetosphere size

May 2009

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2009agusmsm32a..05l&link_type=abstract

American Geophysical Union, Spring Meeting 2009, abstract #SM32A-05

Physics

2700 Magnetospheric Physics (6939), 2723 Magnetic Reconnection (7526, 7835), 2724 Magnetopause And Boundary Layers, 2784 Solar Wind/Magnetosphere Interactions, 6275 Saturn

Scientific paper

Reconnection events at the magnetopause of Saturn have been identified in the Cassini observations, but we do not know how important this reconnection is for the Saturnian system. At Earth, the magnetopause reconnection removes magnetic flux from the dayside magnetosphere and transports it to the magnetotail, playing an important role in the magnetosphere dynamics. Flux transfer events (FTEs) are interconnected flux tubes seen at the terrestrial magnetopause that contribute to the transfer of magnetic flux from the dayside magnetopause to the geomagnetic tail. At Earth these events occur principally when the IMF is southward and their occurrence rate decreases with increasing solar wind Mach number. Because they have a size and flux content that can be estimated these events can provide a lower limit of the magnetic flux transferred from the dayside to the tail in a planetary magnetosphere. At Saturn, we have found no well-formed FTE events near the subsolar magnetopause in the Cassini MAG data, which may imply reconnection not important at Saturn. We can further examine this by studying the size of the magnetosphere during northward and southward IMF. The stand-off distance of the terrestrial magnetopause is smaller during southward IMF than that during northward IMF, because southward IMF leads to magnetopause reconnection which removes magnetic flux from the subsolar region. The size and shape of Saturn's magnetopause is well modeled by Arridge et al. (2006). We use their model to estimate the magnetopause stand-off distance of the Cassini observed magnetopause crossing near noon, and compare the distributions of stand-off distances during northward and southward IMF.

Affiliated with

Also associated with

No associations

Rating

Reconnection at the magnetopause of Saturn: perspectives from FTE and magnetosphere size 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 Reconnection at the magnetopause of Saturn: perspectives from FTE and magnetosphere size, we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and Reconnection at the magnetopause of Saturn: perspectives from FTE and magnetosphere size will most certainly appreciate the feedback.

Rate now

Comments { 0 }

Profile ID: LFWR-SCP-O-1109218