| Autor: |
Jamey Szalay, Todd Smith, Eric Zirnstein, David McComas, Luke Begley, Fran Bagenal, Peter Delamere, Robert Wilson, Phil Valek, Andrew Poppe, Quentin Nenon, Frederic Allegrini, Robert Ebert, Scott Bolton |
| Rok vydání: |
2022 |
| DOI: |
10.5194/epsc2022-702 |
| Popis: |
Water-group gas continuously escapes from Jupiter’s icy moons to form co-orbiting populations of particles, or neutral toroidal clouds. We report the first observations of H2+ pickup ions in Jupiter’s magnetosphere from 13-18 Jovian radii, confirming the presence of a neutral H2 toroidal cloud. Pickup ion densities are consistent with an advecting Europa-genic cloud source. As the observed H2+ ions are originally produced from H2 lost from Europa, the abundance of detected ions allows us to determine that ~1 kg/s of neutral H2 is lost from Europa. Hence, these observations presented here for the first time directly measure ions from a neutral H2 toroidal cloud at Jupiter, prove the cloud provides an additional plasma source in Jupiter’s magnetosphere, and provide the most direct constraints on Europa’s loss of neutral H2 via observations of the neutral toroidal cloud’s primary loss process – pickup ions. |
| Databáze: |
OpenAIRE |
| Externí odkaz: |
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