The Pickup of Titan’s Ionospheric Ions into Saturn’s Magnetosphere

Details The Pickup of Titan’s Ionospheric Ions into Saturn’s Magnetosphere The Pickup of Titan’s Ionospheric Ions into Saturn’s Magnetosphere

Dec 2009

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2009agufmsm23c1640p&link_type=abstract

American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2009, abstract #SM23C-1640

Physics

[2732] Magnetospheric Physics / Magnetosphere Interactions With Satellites And Rings, [2756] Magnetospheric Physics / Planetary Magnetospheres, [5443] Planetary Sciences: Solid Surface Planets / Magnetospheres, [6280] Planetary Sciences: Solar System Objects / Saturnian Satellites

Scientific paper

Previous results from the Cassini Plasma Spectrometer (CAPS) have indicated that Titan’s ionosphere does not appear to contribute significantly to Saturn’s magnetospheric ion population. Cassini orbits intercepting Titan’s orbital path show no obvious evidence of a “nitrogen ion torus”, in contrast to, say, the sulfur ion torus at Jupiter that exists along Io’s orbital path. On the other hand, CAPS and the Ion Neutral Mass Spectrometer (INMS) clearly detect a large and cold population of nitrogen and methane ions in the near vicinity of Titan (e.g. Hartle, et al., 2006; Waite, et al., 2005). We have undertaken a study to determine the extent to which Titan’s ionospheric ions are injected into Saturn’s magnetosphere by summing CAPS ion composition data over multiple encounters and exploring the evolution of both ion populations as a function of distance from Titan. In this study we seek evidence for the entrainment of nitrogen and methane ions into the hotter, co-rotating magnetospheric plasma. Our preliminary results reveal evidence of ion pickup as far as 10 Titan radii (~0.4 RS) from Titan, but no further. At this distance, nitrogen ions have a mean energy of ~600 eV, as compared to the mean energy of the bulk magnetospheric (water group) ions at this distance from Saturn of ~1-2 keV. The detection of CH4+ from the CAPS data is somewhat ambiguous due to partial aliasing with O+, but preliminary indications show the presence of methane pickup ions out to a few Titan radii. By the time of the Fall AGU meeting, we plan to further refine our detection of methane ions using an independent fitting technique. We also plan to map out the spatial distribution of nitrogen and methane ions with respect to Titan and determine upper limits on the detection thresholds for these ions.

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