Evidence for Long-Duration Magnetic Reconnection in Saturn's Magnetotail

Details Evidence for Long-Duration Magnetic Reconnection in Saturn's Magnetotail Evidence for Long-Duration Magnetic Reconnection in Saturn's Magnetotail

May 2009

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2009agusmsm13a..05m&link_type=abstract

American Geophysical Union, Spring Meeting 2009, abstract #SM13A-05

Physics

2723 Magnetic Reconnection (7526, 7835), 2740 Magnetospheric Configuration And Dynamics, 2744 Magnetotail, 2756 Planetary Magnetospheres (5443, 5737, 6033), 2764 Plasma Sheet

Scientific paper

On 20 August 2006 the Cassini spacecraft was 32 Rs from Saturn in the northern magnetotail at a latitude of 13 deg and a local time of 21.9. At this time, a fast, sunward, magnetic-field-aligned beam of ions was observed, lasting approximately 1 hour. The beam was observed as the spacecraft crossed from the tail lobe into the plasma sheet, during an interval characterized by a slight northward turning of the magnetic field, followed by a strong dipolarization. CAPS observations show that the bulk of the ions, from a few to around 10 keV were almost exclusively H+, whereas at higher energies MIMI observed both H+ and O+. In analogy to the Earth's plasma-sheet boundary layer, the likeliest source of such ion beams traveling from the more distant tail toward Saturn is a region of magnetic reconnection tailward of the spacecraft. The persistence of the beam for an hour demonstrates that such reconnection can be of long duration in Saturn's magnetotail. The sequence of plasma and field observations for this event will be presented, and the implications for Saturn's magnetotail dynamics will be examined.

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