Dust clouds and plasmoids in Saturn's Magnetosphere as seen with four Cassini instruments
| Autor: | E. Khalisi |
|---|---|
| Rok vydání: | 2017 |
| Předmět: |
Atmospheric Science
010504 meteorology & atmospheric sciences Aerospace Engineering Magnetosphere Flux FOS: Physical sciences Plasmoid Astrophysics::Cosmology and Extragalactic Astrophysics 01 natural sciences Interplanetary dust cloud Saturn 0103 physical sciences Astrophysics::Solar and Stellar Astrophysics 010303 astronomy & astrophysics Astrophysics::Galaxy Astrophysics 0105 earth and related environmental sciences Cosmic dust Physics Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP) Astronomy Astronomy and Astrophysics Geophysics Space and Planetary Science Magnetosphere of Saturn Physics::Space Physics General Earth and Planetary Sciences Astrophysics::Earth and Planetary Astrophysics Event (particle physics) Astrophysics - Earth and Planetary Astrophysics |
| DOI: | 10.48550/arxiv.1702.01579 |
| Popis: | We revisit the evidence for a "dust cloud" observed by the Cassini spacecraft at Saturn in 2006. The data of four instruments are simultaneously compared to interpret the signatures of a coherent swarm of dust that would have remained near the equatorial plane for as long as six weeks. The conspicuous pattern, as seen in the dust counters of the Cosmic Dust Analyser (CDA), clearly repeats on three consecutive revolutions of the spacecraft. That particular cloud is estimated to about 1.36 Saturnian radii in size, and probably broadening. We also present a reconnection event from the magnetic field data (MAG) that leave behind several plasmoids like those reported from the Voyager flybys in the early 1980s. That magnetic bubbles happened at the dawn side of Saturn's magnetosphere. At their nascency, the magnetic field showed a switchover of its alignment, disruption of flux tubes and a recovery on a time scale of about 30 days. However, we cannot rule out that different events might have taken place. Empirical evidence is shown at another occasion when a plasmoid was carrying a cloud of tiny dust particles such that a connection between plasmoids and coherent dust clouds is probable. Comment: accepted by Advances in Space Research; preprint: 28 pages, 10 figures, 2 tables |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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