Arridge, CS; Russell, CT; Khurana, KK; Achilleos, N; Andre, N; Rymer, AM; Dougherty, MK; Arridge, CS; Russell, CT; Khurana, KK; Achilleos, N; Andre, N; Rymer, AM; Dougherty, MK; Coates, AJ; - view fewer (2007) Mass of Saturn's magnetodisc: Cassini observations. Geophysical Research Letters , 34 (9) , Article L09108. 10.1029/2006GL028921.

Preview

PDF 2006GL028921.pdf Available under License : See the attached licence file. Download (473kB)

Abstract

Saturn's ring current was observed by Pioneer 11 and the two Voyager spacecraft to extend 8 - 16 R-S in the equatorial plane and appeared to be driven by stress balance with the centrifugal force. We present Cassini observations that show thin current sheets on the dawn flank of Saturn's magnetosphere, symptomatic of the formation of a magnetodisc. We show that the centrifugal force is the dominant mechanical stress in these current sheets, which reinforces a magnetodisc interpretation - the formation of the current sheet is fundamentally rotational in origin. The stress balance calculation is also used to estimate the mass density in the disc, which show good agreement with independent in-situ measurements of the density. We estimate the total mass in the magnetodisc to be similar to 10(6) kg.

Download activity - last month

Export as XMLCSVJSON

Download activity - last 12 months

Export as XMLJSONCSV

Downloads by country - last 12 months

Export as CSVJSONXML

Archive Staff Only

View Item