Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astronomy
Scientific paper
Sep 2008
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2008dps....40.4311h&link_type=abstract
American Astronomical Society, DPS meeting #40, #43.11; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 40, p.476
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astronomy
Scientific paper
Resolution of the details of a planetary magnetic field from magnetometer measurements made during a single flyby can be limited by the incomplete geometrical sampling of the trajectory. This problem was especially severe for the only spacecraft visit to Uranus, that of Voyager 2 in 1986. Fortunately, auroral footprints serve as additional constraints that may be used to determine the higher multipole moments of the planetary field. This approach has been used by Connerney (JGR 103:11,929, 1998) to improve the magnetic field model of Jupiter.
In the present work, this approach is applied to improving the resolution of the magnetic field of Uranus. The earlier determination of Uranus' auroral emission distribution (Herbert JGR 99:4143, 1994) from scans by the Voyager 2 Ultraviolet Spectrometer (UVS) has been improved by
incorporating more observations and using more powerful analysis techniques. However, the resulting new estimate of the locus of the auroral oval does not match the expectations derived from the Voyager magnetometer (Connerney et al., JGR 92:15,329, 1987, Q3 model).
Accordingly, a search has been initiated for planetary magnetic field model coefficients that agree both with the new auroral locus and also with the magnetic field observations. This search is more ambiguous than that at Jupiter, because the source of the aurora is not clearly defined, but a reasonable starting assumption is that it lies at constant L shell (maximum field-line distance from Uranus). Based on this assumption, preliminary results confirm the Q3 model quadrupole moment's large magnitude but disagree with its orientation. Further analysis will be presented at the meeting.
Support from the NASA Outer Planets Program made this work possible, and is gratefully acknowledged.
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