Comparison of Plasma Sources in Solar System Magnetospheres

The plasma sources of Mercury, Earth, Jupiter, and Saturn have been described in this issue in great detail. Much less information exists about the plasma sources of Uranus and Neptune. Only one flyby of the Voyager 2 spacecraft through the highly complex and time variable magnetospheres of those ice giants gives us a limited snapshot of the main plasma sources in those systems. The basic knowledge derived from those flybys are described briefly in this paper for completeness. The main purpose of this paper is to summarize the plasma sources of all planetary magnetospheres and compare the similarities and differences of those huge plasma laboratories in our solar system.

[1]  W. I. Axford,et al.  The Magnetosphere of Uranus: Hot Plasma and Radiation Environment , 1986, Science.

[2]  Paul D. Feldman,et al.  Transient Water Vapor at Europa’s South Pole , 2014, Science.

[3]  R. McNutt,et al.  Voyager 2 plasma ion observations in the magnetosphere of Uranus , 1987 .

[4]  Richard Selesnick,et al.  Survey of electrons in the Uranian magnetosphere: Voyager 2 observations , 1987 .

[5]  Supriya Chakrabarti,et al.  Uranus Pathfinder: exploring the origins and evolution of Ice Giant planets , 2012 .

[6]  H. T. Smith,et al.  Saturn Plasma Sources and Associated Transport Processes , 2015 .

[7]  J. Lebreton,et al.  Cassini/Huygens flyby of the Jovian system , 2004 .

[8]  Charles F. Kennel,et al.  LIMIT ON STABLY TRAPPED PARTICLE FLUXES , 1966 .

[9]  Carolyn C. Porco,et al.  HOW THE GEYSERS, TIDAL STRESSES, AND THERMAL EMISSION ACROSS THE SOUTH POLAR TERRAIN OF ENCELADUS ARE RELATED , 2014 .

[10]  J. Connerney,et al.  The magnetic field and magnetospheric configuration of Uranus , 1991 .

[11]  N. Krupp,et al.  Processes forming and sustaining Saturns proton radiation belts , 2013 .

[12]  E. Samain,et al.  OSS (Outer Solar System): a fundamental and planetary physics mission to Neptune, Triton and the Kuiper Belt , 2011, 1106.0132.

[13]  B. Mauk,et al.  Comparative investigation of the energetic ion spectra comprising the magnetospheric ring currents of the solar system , 2014, Journal of geophysical research. Space physics.

[14]  Barry H. Mauk,et al.  Electron radiation belts of the solar system , 2010 .

[15]  F. Bagenal.  Heliophysics: Plasma Physics of the Local Cosmos: Comparative planetary environments , 2009 .

[16]  Dale P. Cruikshank,et al.  Neptune and Triton , 1995 .

[17]  A. Cheng,et al.  Proton and oxygen plasmas at Uranus , 1987 .

[18]  Barry H. Mauk,et al.  The hot plasma and radiation environment of the Uranian magnetosphere , 1987 .

[19]  Norbert Krupp,et al.  Energetic particle phase space densities at Saturn: Cassini observations and interpretations , 2011 .