Dust Grains around Jupiter—The Observations of the Galileo Dust Detector

Dust on the Outskirts of the Jovian System

“…The noise could be removed from the class 2 data in this region (Krüger et al 1999b), but the lower classes 0 and 1 are noise events to almost 100%. This is the reason why other studies of the Jupiter dust environment (e.g., Krüger et al 2000, Thiessenhusen et al 2000, Krivov et al 2002, Krüger et al 2001) used the events with CLN = 3 and CLN = 2 only. On the contrary, beyond 20R J , the noise contamination in classes 0, 1, and 2 is very low, especially in the higher ion amplitude ranges AR ≥ 2.…”

“…We will call them, for brevity, p-, r-, a-, and dorbits, respectively. In so doing, we generalize the analysis of Thiessenhusen et al (2000) who considered p-and r-orbits only in their study of dust in the region of the Galilean satellites. All these orbits are assumed to be circular (e = 0).…”

“…As most of the stream particles generate impact events in AR = 1 , Krüger et al 1999b, Thiessenhusen et al 2000, Krüger et al 2001, we consider events with AR ≥ 2 (IA > 7) only.…”

Europa's Sodium Atmosphere: An Ocean Source?

“…Sputtering of dust grains is one possible source. Thiessenhusen et al (2000) described a population of grains of 10 −11 g with a density of 4 ×10 −13 cm −3 at Europa's orbit originating from Io or Europa. These grains can be sputtered by the energetic ions, producing a population of neutral Na atoms.…”

First results from the Venetia Burney Student Dust Counter on the New Horizons mission

“…Measurements of the IDP distribution are needed to constrain a number of related phenomena across the solar system. Several airless bodies have shown evidence for a dusty exosphere, consisting of dust grains ejected from the surface by interplanetary dust particle bombardment, including the Moon, Phobos and Deimos [Dubinin et al, 1990], Ganymede [Krüger et al, 1999], Europa [Thiessenhusen et al, 2000], the minor moons of Jupiter [Burns et al, 1999] and Pluto-Charon [Thiessenhusen et al, 2002]. Knowledge of the background flux at Saturn can help to distinguish between IDPs and grains ejected by Enceladus [Spahn et al, 2006] and can also put constraints on the compositional evolution of the saturnian ring system [Cuzzi and Estrada, 1998].…”