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H+3 in the jovian planets

Lam, Hoanh An; (1996) H+3 in the jovian planets. Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London). Green open access

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Abstract

Jupiter has long been a subject of fascination and curiosity. Recently it has become the focus of numerous studies first with ground-based telescopes and then of unmaned spacecraft, notably the Pioneers and Voyagers series. The discovery of the ionic species H+3 on Jupiter presented the scientific community with an important tool for probing and studying the jovian ionosphere. Earth based observations have answered some questions but raised a number of others concerning the production and maintenance of the jovian ionosphere. Infrared images of Jupiter were taken and analysed for morphology and distribution of H+3. Auroral emission was discovered to have a well defined structure and found to be fairly stable over a long period of time. The main area of emission was found to be located at the footprints of high L-shells, possibly above L-shell = 30 (Connerney's O6 magnetic field model 1991, 1993). The northern H+3 emission appears to occur in a large patch around ?III = 150° and in a series of bright spots forming a possible oval. In the south the emission seems more diffuse with none of the bright spots similar to those observed in the north. The emission appears to come from an oval, but due to the geometry of the southern aurora it is hard to say whether this is true or not. Spectra of Jupiter taken at wavelengths sensitive to H+3 emissions are presented in this study. Results of fitting a theoretical H+3 spectrum to the data are reported. H+3 emission was found to originate from the whole disk of Jupiter on the day side. Mapping the H3 emission onto a longitude, latitude grid shows that the results agrees with the imaging work. The low latitude emission is found to correlate closely with the magnetic field dip angles as predicted by Connerney's O6 model (1991, 1993).

Type: Thesis (Doctoral)
Qualification: Ph.D
Title: H+3 in the jovian planets
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
Language: English
Additional information: Thesis digitised by ProQuest.
Keywords: Pure sciences
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10097910
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