Energetic Electrons Near Jupiter's Current Sheet

Jupiter’s outer magnetospheric current sheet has been shown to have a local time asymmetry where the sheet is thin on the dawn side and thick at dusk. Specifically, magnetic field observations from Galileo in the rotational equator show that the spacecraft clearly moved from a lobe with strong magnetic field, through the thin sheet, where the field goes nearly to zero, and then into the other lobe. However, observations at dusk show that Galileo rarely moved into the lobe region and remained inside a thick current sheet. In this presentation, energetic (~100 keV - 10 MeV) electron observations from Galileo are compared with magnetic field measurements in the middle and outer magnetosphere (30-100 RJ). In the dawn sector, there are clear correlations between the local maxima in the energetic electron count rate and the magnetic equator. In the dusk sector, when Galileo is often within the current sheet, local count rate maxima do not consistently occur at magnetic equator crossings. Examples from several local times, radial distances and energy ranges are presented.