Juno Perijove 1 radio occultation of the Io plasma torus
Abstract
Io's volcanic activity, the dominant source of plasma at Jupiter, releases material into Io's atmosphere which is lost to Jupiter's magnetosphere near Io. This material is then ionized and trapped by the magnetic field to form a torus of plasma around Jupiter, called the Io plasma torus. This plasma can be detected by radio occultations in which the plasma's total electron content affects properties of a spacecraft's radio signal as it propagates through the plasma on the way to the receiver. The total electron content of the Io plasma torus is derived from the duel frequency (Ka and X-band) gravity measurements from the Juno spacecraft during Perijove 1. These measurements, along with the 2-D Phipps and Withers (2017) torus model and a 3-D model of the torus based on recent reanalysis of Voyager PLS data by Bagenal et al. (2017), have been used to determine plasma properties of the torus at the time of Juno Perijove 1. The uncertainty in the data is around 2.25 TECU or 6.1% at the peak for an integration time of 10 seconds.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2017
- Bibcode:
- 2017AGUFM.P31C2820P
- Keywords:
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- 2756 Planetary magnetospheres;
- MAGNETOSPHERIC PHYSICS;
- 5704 Atmospheres;
- PLANETARY SCIENCES: FLUID PLANETS;
- 5724 Interiors;
- PLANETARY SCIENCES: FLUID PLANETS;
- 6220 Jupiter;
- PLANETARY SCIENCES: SOLAR SYSTEM OBJECTS