Examination of Enceladus Plume Variability and the Impact on Magnetospheric Neutral Gas Distribution

Details Examination of Enceladus Plume Variability and the Impact on Magnetospheric Neutral Gas Distribution Examination of Enceladus Plume Variability and the Impact on Magnetospheric Neutral Gas Distribution

Sep 2009

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2009dps....41.6406s&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, DPS meeting #41, #64.06

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

Scientific paper

The neutral particle dominance over charged particles in Saturn's magnetosphere was evident prior to Cassini arrival at Saturn in 2004. However, the observation of active plumes emanating from the southern pole of the small icy moon, Enceladus provided key information for understanding particle sources and dynamics in the magnetospheric region. Estimates show this 252 km radius moon is likely the dominant source of particles in the magnetosphere producing 1027 to 1028 neutral water molecules per second. Cassini has flown through the plumes on several occasions which appear to indicate variability in this source rate. For this research, we use Cassini CAPS, MIMI and INMS observations during these encounters to constrain our 3-D multi-species neutral particle model to estimate the plume source rate, ejection velocity and ejection angle for three Enceladus encounters (E2, E3 & E5). We also show evidence for plume source rate variability of a at least a factor of four over approximately 6 months and the impact this amount of variability has on global neutral (H2O, OH and O) particle densities.

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