SM41J-08
Observations of the Jovian Mid-Magnetosphere by the New Horizons Solar Wind Around Pluto (SWAP) Ion Spectrometer
Thursday, 17 December 2015: 09:36
2009 (Moscone West)
Philip W Valek1, Fran Bagenal2, Heather Alison Elliott3, Philippe Louarn4, David J McComas3, Georgios Nicolaou5 and Drake A Ranquist6, (1)Southwest Research Inst, San Antonio, TX, United States, (2)University of Colorado at Boulder, Boulder, CO, United States, (3)Southwest Research Institute, San Antonio, TX, United States, (4)IRAP, Toulouse, France, (5)University of Texas at San Antonio, San Antonio, TX, United States, (6)Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, Boulder, CO, United States
Abstract:
During the Hew Horizons flyby of Jupiter, the spacecraft crossed near 32 RJ on the dusk side before traveling down the Jovian magnetotail. During the period when the spacecraft was in the mid-magnetosphere (<50 RJ), the Solar Wind Around Pluto (SWAP) instrument observed two distinct ion populations. The first was the low energy tail of a hotter population of magnetospheric ions. The second population had a lower energy, ~ 30 eV / q in the spacecraft frame. SWAP measures the differential ion flux for particles as a function of energy per charge of between ~20 eV / q to ~8 keV / q, integrated over a wide field of view. The SWAP instrument can also estimate the mass of the ions based on the detector response. For the Jovian flyby, heavy ions (> 8 amu) are only observed by SWAP in the second lower energy (30 eV / q) population seen in the mid-magnetosphere. Here we present the observations of the SWAP instrument during its closest approach of Jupiter and discuss these two ion populations.
