Dynamics of Jovian Ring Dust

Details Dynamics of Jovian Ring Dust Dynamics of Jovian Ring Dust

Sep 1999

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1999dda....31.0401b&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, DDA meeting #31, #04.01

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

Scientific paper

From recent Galileo and Keck observations, Jupiter's outermost gossamer rings seem to be collisional ejecta derived from the moons Amalthea and Thebe, whose orbits circumscribe these very faint rings. The rings' visible grains, which are small, evolve inward by Poynting-Robertson drag. The main ring is probably debris from Adrastea, which skims along its periphery. The loss of ejecta from these ring-moons is shown to be heavily influenced by the satellites' size, shape, orbital radius and surface characteristics. Recollision times into satellites are 500-10,000 yrs in the vertically extended gossamer rings but only 20 years for the equatorially confined main ring, accounting for the ring's relative faintness near Metis' path. Mutual particle collisions are rare, allowing the use of single-particle dynamics. Periodic electromagnetic forces, due to Jupiter's rotating magnetic field, may resonate with the epicyclic frequencies of grains. Such a 3:2 ``Lorentz" resonance lies just upstream of where the ring noticeably thickens, while the 2:1 version may drive ring grains into Jupiter's atmosphere. An infinite number of such resonances cluster about synchronous orbit, populating the gossamer ring region. We show through numerical simulations that, for sufficiently slow evolution, resonant trapping should be common. Jumps are not seen in images, implying smaller charge-to-mass ratios than assumed or inadequate image processing.

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