Sensitivity of Titan's ENA emissions to incident ion flux and exospheric density

Details Sensitivity of Titan's ENA emissions to incident ion flux and exospheric density Sensitivity of Titan's ENA emissions to incident ion flux and exospheric density

Dec 2006

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2006agufmsm23a0280l&link_type=abstract

American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2006, abstract #SM23A-0280

Physics

2732 Magnetosphere Interactions With Satellites And Rings, 6025 Interactions With Solar Wind Plasma And Fields, 6280 Saturnian Satellites, 6281 Titan

Scientific paper

The Cassini Ion and Neutral Camera (INCA) provided images of energetic neutral atoms (ENAs) that are created when energetic (10-200 keV) ions in Saturn's magnetosphere interact with Titan's neutral exosphere. These images show an asymmetric halo of ENA emission about Titan that fades at larger distances. Large variations in ENA brightness reflect both temporal variability in the local magnetospheric ion population and also possibly related variations in the exospheric density. An advantage of ENA imaging is that it can remotely monitor the ion energy input into Titan's atmosphere and the exospheric response together. The challenge is to sort out the relative effects. The INMS investigation on Cassini has detected modest variability and asymmetries in the exosphere with in-situ measurements, but the flybys have been too few to detect the extremes of exospheric variations and the global behavior. We use a model for the Titan ENA images based on Monte Carlo test-particle simulations that utilize the electric and magnetic fields from a 3-d MHD simulation of Titan's magnetospheric interaction with various models of the exosphere to study the differences between the magnetospheric ion and exospheric density distribution effects on the ENA images. We suggest how the ENA images may be used to provide remote sensing of Titan's exosphere when the spacecraft is not flying through it, and the implications of the very bright and extended ENA images.

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