Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astronomy
Scientific paper
Jan 2012
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2012hell.conf....4d&link_type=abstract
10th Hellenic Astronomical Conference, Proceedings of the conference held at Ioannina, Greece, 5-8 September 2011. Edited by Io
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astronomy
Scientific paper
Escape into space of the constituents of a planetary upper atmosphere can occur either in the form of neutral gas (thermal escape or non-thermal escape), or in the form of plasma. The long-term stability of an atmosphere results from the balance between source and escape rates. Two cases will be examined: Titan and Earth. Titan is the second largest planetary satellite in the Solar System and is the only one that has an atmosphere as substantial as that of the Earth. Titan's nitrogen rich atmosphere is embedded within Saturn's magnetosphere, and is directly bombarded by energetic ions due to Titan's lack of a significant intrinsic magnetic field. In addition to thermal escape, energy input from Saturn's magnetosphere and from Solar UV radiation can drive several non-thermal escape mechanisms in Titan's upper atmosphere: sputtering, dissociation and dissociative ionization of molecular nitrogen producing pick-up ions, photochemical production of fast neutrals etc. Earth also constantly loses matter, mostly in the form of H+ and O+ ions, through various outflow processes from the upper atmosphere and ionosphere. Most of the ions are low-energy (< 1 eV) but can escape from the high-latitude ionosphere and travel along open magnetic field lines into the magnetospheric tail lobes. At lower latitudes the main magnetospheric plasma reservoir is the plasmasphere, which is a toroidal region encircling the Earth and containing cold and dense plasma. Plasma plumes, forming in the outer plasmasphere and released outwards, constitute a well-established mode for plasmaspheric material release to the magnetosphere. They are associated to geomagnetically active periods and the related electric field change. In 1992 Lemaire and Shunk proposed the existence of an additional mode for plasmaspheric material release and escape: a plasmaspheric wind, steadily transporting cold plasmaspheric plasma outwards across the geomagnetic field lines. This has been proposed on a theoretical basis. Direct detection of this wind has, however, eluded observation in the past. Analysis of ion measurements, acquired in the outer plasmasphere by the CIS experiment onboard the four Cluster spacecraft provide now, for the first time, an experimental confirmation of the plasmaspheric wind.
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