Saturns Magnetosphere

Luqiong Meng - 00513623

Project Code: SPAT-Dougherty-1 Supervisor: M. K. Dougherty Assessor: R. J. Forsyth October 11, 2010

Abstract A literature review on the background research and present understanding on Saturn, Saturns dynamic magnetosphere and the involvement of its moons. The physics and interaction between the bow shock and magnetopause were discussed in greater detail as it presented an opportunity for further research. The theoretical method for determining the position of the boundaries, and the geometric shape of the bow shock and magnetopause was also explored. Data from Cassini and pre-Cassini era were examined for identication of boundary crossing positions, and to understand the bimodal distribution magnetopauses boundary position.

Contents
1 Introduction 2 Background Reading 2.1 Saturns Rings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2 Saturns Moons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.3 Magnetosphere . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.3.1 The Bow Shock and Magnetosheath 2.3.2 The Magnetopause . . . . . . . . . 2.3.3 The Magnetotail . . . . . . . . . . 3 4 4 4 5 5 6 8

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3 Geometric Distribution of Saturns Bow Shock and Magnetopause 10 3.1 Theoretical Models . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 3.2 Observations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 4 Conclusion Bibliography 13 14

Introduction

Many groundbreaking discoveries have been made since Cassini entered the orbit of Saturn in June of 2004. It has given us the opportunity to closely study its rings, moons and its dynamic magnetosphere in more detail than ever before. The mission has been extended for another seven years - Cassini Solstice Mission, for further investigations of Saturns magnetosphere, Titan and Enceladus as well as other icy moons. Among the 12 instruments that are equipped on the Cassini orbiter, the frequently used equipments for the analysis of magnetosphere are the Technique Magnetometer (MAG) is for direct sensing of strength and direction of magnetic eld of Saturn and the Cassini Plasma Spectrometer (CAPS) for measuring the energy and charge particles that the instrument encounters.

Figure 1: Artist impression of the Cassini Orbiter during the Saturn Orbit Insertion (SOI). SOI is approx. 90min long and it oers the opportunity to closely observe Saturn and its rings at high resolution. Source: NASA

The study of Saturns magnetosphere will provide us with a deeper under-

2. BACKGROUND READING

standing of the planets interior and how it interacts with the solar wind, and how the properties observed dier to that of Earth.

2 2.1

Background Reading Saturns Rings

The Jovian planet has the most extensive planetary ring system - seven major divisions of rings that consist mostly of icy particles and dust. Amongst Saturns rings, there are multiple gaps. The Keeler Gap lies within the A Ring, and is caused by the moon Daphnis orbit. Whilst other gaps remain unexplained, many gaps are due to orbital resonances of Saturns moons. The moon Enceladus orbits within the E Ring, outermost ring in Saturns main ring cluster, and is believed to be a source of icy particles for the ring.

2.2

Saturns Moons

Saturn has 53 moons that are ocially named. The most notable and extensively researched is Titan, due to its thick complex atmospheric conditions and the absence of intrinsic magnetic eld. Titan orbits mostly within the magnetosphere, along with the absence of signicant dipole moment [Ness et al., 1982; Backes et al., 2005], the Kronian magnetospheric plasma has direct access to the upper Titan atmosphere. One of Saturns icy moons, Enceladus (orbits at radius of 3.95Rs [Jia et al., 2010]), has gained particular interest in the scientic world due to its plasma torus is mainly composed of water group ions [Richardson et al., 1998]. The study from the data that was collected by the Cassini ybys in 2005 and 2008 has conrmed that the water plum is asymmetric, with extensive emanating jets from the south pole [Waite et al., 2006; Hansen et al., 2006]. As expected, the study [Kivelson et al., 2006] conrmed that Enceladus is indeed the main source of plasma in E ring, and the mass loading aects the surrounding plasma in the magnetosphere .

2.3. MAGNETOSPHERE

2.3
2.3.1

Magnetosphere
The Bow Shock and Magnetosheath

The ionised solar plasma pervades interplanetary space, it controls the size of the magnetosphere and the dynamics of its boundaries. Due to the supersonic speed of solar wind, magnetic eld around Saturn deects the solar plasma around the planet forming magnetosonic shock wave known as a bow shock. The bow shock slows the solar wind to subsonic speed so it ows around the magnetosphere in streamline shape. The shock wave is formed in a collionless plasma, where by denition means that the collisions between the constituent particles happen so infrequently that they do not play an important role [Kivelson and Russell, Intro. Space, 1995], and hence making this process irreversible as the state of the medium through which the shock travelled is changed.

Figure 2: A diagrammatic representation of the structure of Saturns magnetosphere. Featuring the bow shock, magnetosheath, magnetopause and the lobes. Source: NASA

Magnetosheath shown in Figure 2 is the transitory region of space between the magnetopause and the bow shock. According to [Alexandrova and Saur et al., 2008], the Saturns magnetosheath contains shocked and decelerated

2. BACKGROUND READING

solar wind plasma with high level of magnetic uctuations. Intuitively, the intensity of the uctuation is dependent on the geometry of the bow shock. The magnetic structural of the bow shock to the magnetosheath is also thought to be inuenced by , ratio of thermal to magnetic pressure, which aects the intensity of the uctuation [Farris et al., 1992]. The observed magnetic structure of a bow shock transition between the solar wind and magnetosheath is also inuenced by the upstream plasma (ratio of thermal to magnetic pressure), which aects the level of turbulence seen in the magnetosheath [Farris et al., 1992]. Saturns bow shock was rst observed by Pioneer 11 in 1979 [Acuna and Ness, 1980]. The most comprehensive model of bow shock is done by Slavin et al. [1985], where the Voyager and Pioneer ybys t a hyperbolic surface model as approximated. Figures 3 below are examples of the spectrographs that are observed (by Dougherty et al. [2005]) when Cassini crossed the bow shock. The 3D geometry of the bow shock is still a topic of research which will be discussed in detail in Section 3.

2.3.2

The Magnetopause

The size and shape of the magnetopause gives us important indications to the magnetospheres internal structure. The physics of the magnetopause boundaries are better understood than bow shock due to the extensive studies done by [Arridge et al., 2006; Achilleos et al., 2008 etc.]. Arridge et al. states, the location and the shape of a Saturns magnetopause is principally determined by the dynamic of the solar wind, and by the distribution of stresses inside the magnetosphere. Theoretically by assuming the pressure balances across the magnetopause, an estimated position can be calculated. The condition given below is satised at the boundary, (v 2 )sw 4B(r)2 20 ,
m

(2.1)

where and v are the density and velocity of the solar wind respectively, B(r) is the magnetic eld strength of the planet and 0 is the permeability of free space. Since the magnetic eld strength is proportional to r13 , solving

2.3. MAGNETOSPHERE

Figure 3: The spectrographs show the magnetic strength and the orientation measured by VHM during inbound pass of the SOI orbit. The horizontal axis shows the spacecraft event time (SCET). Also shown are the spacecraft distance from Saturn center (range) in Saturn radii (RS); the latitude with respect to Saturns equatorial plane; and the spacecrafts local time with respect to Saturn (SLT) in decimal hours. Bow shock crossings are labeled, and examples of upstream wave intervals are shown in the bottom panel. Source: Achilleos at el., 2006

the above condition for r will give us the estimated radius, r

6

2 2B0 , 0 v 2

(2.2)

where B0 is the magnetic eld strength of planet at r = 0. It has been measured that the magnetic eld strength at Saturns equator is 21T [Belenkaya et al., 2006]. As demonstrated on Figure 4, the magnetopause is closed, i.e. the component of B normal to the boundary is zero.

The statistical techniques for Jupiter were used to analyse the empirical shape of the magnetopause in [Achilleos et al., 2008], whereby the distribution of stando distance of the magnetopause is a sum of two normal distributions. The results from Achilleos et al. strongly suggest that the internal mass loading and loss from the magnetospheric disk could be the

2. BACKGROUND READING

Figure 4: A simple sketch of the magnetosphere in the noon-midnight meridian. Source: W. J. Hughes, Introduction to Space Physics, 1995

underlying reason for this bimodal distribution of magnetopause. As discussed in Section 2.2, the plasma in the magnetopause is mainly ejected by Enceladus.

2.3.3

The Magnetotail

On the nightside of the magnetosphere stretches out into a magnetotail, where the reservoir of energy and plasma are situated.The two magnetotail lobes connects magnetically to polar region, shown in Figure 5. By assuming that the magnetic ux is conserved between the polar gap and tail lobes, an estimated distance for the radius of the tail can be calculated [Kivelson and Russell, 1995] as below, RT = RS 4B0 BT
1 2

sin ,

(2.3)

where RT and BT are the radius and magnetic eld strength of the tail lobe, RS is the radium of Saturn, B0 is the equatorial eld strength and is the colatitude of the equatorward edge of the polar cap.

2.3. MAGNETOSPHERE

Intuitively, one would think that as the incident solar wind pressure increases, the aring tail of magnetopause would decrease to make the tail more streamline [Arridge et al., 2006]. However the observations showed the contrary [e.g., Shue et al., 1997], the magnetopause aring increases with the solar wind pressure. A rare phenomenon occurs when frozen-in-ux criterion breaks down at the magnetotails, whereby the opposing lobes comes together to reconnect, and hence the energy stored in the magnetic eld is broken o as a plasmoid, this process is shown in Figure 5. the magnetic reconnection could happen. The condition for ux to be frozen into the eld is when the magnetic Reynolds number Rm 0 uL [Kivelson and Russell, 1995]. Hence when Rm >> 1, the magnetotail swells forming an obstacle that is causing bigger resistance to the solar wind, the plasmoid is pinched o carrying away the reserved energy - process also known as substorm [Mitchell et al., 2005].

Figure 5: A diagram showing the formation of a plasmoid in the magnetotail. Source: D. P. Stern, 2006, A Brief History of Magnetospheric Physics during the Space Age.

3. GEOMETRIC DISTRIBUTION OF SATURNS BOW SHOCK AND 10 MAGNETOPAUSE

3 Geometric Distribution of Saturns Bow Shock and Magnetopause

Extensive amount of research has been done on the geometric shape and size of Saturns magnetopause. However the geometric distribution of the bow shock boundary is still not greatly understood, and hence it is an area that could be explored further.

3.1

Theoretical Models

Currently there are two models for the geometric shape and position of bow shock. The rst was constructed by Slavin et al. [1985] using pre-Cassini data, and the second model was constructed by Hendricks et al. [2005]. Theoretically the shape of a shock wave due to a point object is given by the Mach cone [ Masters et al., 2008], this is when the abrupt pressure dierence between the solar wind and the magnetosphere forming a shock wave that roughly takes in the shape of a cone. The aring angle of the shock wave is dependent on the Mach number M . As the Mach number increases, so does the strength of the shock wave formed, and hence the Mach cone becomes increasingly narrow and vice versa. In the study Masters et al., an axially symmetric conic section about the the solar wind ow direction was used to model the shape of bow shock. The general equation of a conic section is given in the equation below, r= L 1 + cos , (3.1)

where r is the distance from the focus of the conic section to a point on the shock surface, L is the size parameter, is the eccentricity and the focus position and is the corresponding polar coordinate angle with respect to the axis of symmetry [Masters et al., 2008].

3.2. OBSERVATIONS

11

Since the location of magnetopause is determined by the pressure dierent across the boundary, an increase in solar wind pressure will compress the magnetosheath, and in turn the boundary of magnetopause will retrieve [Petrinec and Russell, 1993]. The bow shock is expected to behave in a similar manner as the the geometric shape of the bow shock is a direct consequence of magnetopause. By making the assumptions detailed in Section 3.1 of Masters et al. and after pressure correction, a new model of conic section was obtained with being (1.05 0.09) which emphasises the hyperbolic nature of the observed bow shock. The new best t conic section takes in the form of below (variables same as Equation 3.1), r= L 1 + 1.05 cos . (3.2)

Combining this with the power law gives us a rough estimate of the bow shock position, 1 L RSN = 12.3PSW 4.3 = , (3.3) 2.05 where RSN is the same value as r in (3.2), and PSW is the pressure of the solar wind.

3.2

Observations

Using the method above described in Masters et al., it was found that the new hyperbolic conic section model ts well. As can be seen from Figure 6, the best t conic section to the crossing distribution after correction is shown in red line which is much better t than without correction (Figure 7 on Masters et al. 2008). The size parameter of the average shock location shown in Figure 6 is (512)RS , which implies that the average shock stando distance is (251)RS . These crossing positions implies that the bow shock lies in between the distance of 18RS to 46RS . It was shown that the Slavin et al. has a bigger are, signicant dierences arised between the this and the new model by Masters et al. model is clearly due to the lack of local time coverage in the pre-Cassini era. Based on this particular research paper, it is believed that the magnetosphere is

3. GEOMETRIC DISTRIBUTION OF SATURNS BOW SHOCK AND 12 MAGNETOPAUSE

Figure 6: Left: The positions of the bow shock crossings used in the construction of the model after the correction for solar wind dynamic pressure variation projected into the aberrated x-r plane compared to the optimised conic section. Right: A comparison between the locations of the bow shock predicted by the new empirical model and Slavin et al. model and Hendricks et al. 2005 model. Source: Masters et al. 2008

more compressible than previously predicted by Arridge et al. 2006. For future investigation, it was advised to taken into account of the inertial stresses in the magnetodisc current sheet. With this in mind, further investigation on the distribution of bow shock crossings and how it moves in relation to the magnetopause would be the right direction to gain a insightful understanding of Saturns magnetosphere.

13

Conclusion

A substantial amount of background reading and research has been done to understand the dierent parts of magnetosphere and its boundaries, such as the mass loading eect of Enceladus and frozen-in-ux phenomenon that excretes energetic plasmoid, all of which will be a solid foundation for my future research. The new empirical model for the Saturns bow shock by Masters et al. [2008] provides a good guideline for the methodology to be used and improvements to be done. The dynamic environment of the magnetosphere will provide us with more phenomenons and new discoveries. As more data sample will be available from the extended Cassini mission, the empirical bow shock model will be constantly revised and a construction of the probably distribution (like the one for magnetopause in Joy et al. [2002]) of the position of bow shock would provide us with a better understanding of the interaction between the magnetopause and bow shock.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

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