Three-dimensional simulations of the lunar sodium exosphere and its tail

Details Three-dimensional simulations of the lunar sodium exosphere and its tail Three-dimensional simulations of the lunar sodium exosphere and its tail

Jul 2011

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2011jgra..11607213l&link_type=abstract

Journal of Geophysical Research, Volume 116, Issue A7, CiteID A07213

Physics

2

Atmospheric Composition And Structure: Airglow And Aurora, Atmospheric Composition And Structure: Constituent Sources And Sinks, Atmospheric Composition And Structure: Exosphere, Atmospheric Composition And Structure: Planetary Atmospheres (5210, 5405, 5704)

Scientific paper

The brightness distributions of the lunar sodium exosphere reported by Flynn and Mendillo (1993) and the receding velocities of the lunar sodium tail observed by Mierkiewicz et al. (2006) are reproduced by 3-D Monte Carlo simulations. We consider the effects of two spatially different sodium sources simultaneously: dayside source with the dependency of solar zenith angle and an isotropic source due to micrometeoroid impact. In the simulations, the following effects are taken into account: (1) the gravity of the Moon, the Earth, and the Sun with the orbital motion of the Moon; (2) photoionizations, solar radiation pressure, and returns to the lunar surface; and (3) the shadows of the Earth and Moon. The sodium brightness observed by Flynn and Mendillo (1993) is successfully modeled, from which the most probable source ratio between the isotropic and dayside sources is estimated to be 70%˜80%: 30%˜20%, respectively. The best coma model provides an initial velocity of 2.0 km/s with a narrow Doppler width of 0.2 km/s and a total production rate of 0.7 × 1022/s. On the basis of the best 3-D lunar coma model, we also simulate the receding velocity distribution of lunar sodium tail, and we find satisfactory models for high receding velocity and its wide dispersion observed by Mierkiewicz et al. (2006) considering the effect of variable solar radiation pressure and appropriate ionization times.

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