HR: 1340h
AN: P33A-0237    [Abstracts]
TI: Venus Metal ion and Metal Neutral Species Distributions and Meteor Magnitudes
AU: Webb, P A
EM: phillip.a.webb.1@gsfc.nasa.gov
AF: UMBC/GEST, Code 612.3 NASA GSFC, Greenbelt, MD 20771 United States
AU: * Grebowsky, J M
EM: joseph.m.grebowsky@nasa.gov
AF: Goddard Space Flight Center, Code 695 , Greenbelt, MD 20771 United States
AU: Pesnell, W D
EM: william.d.pesnell@nasa.gov
AF: Goddard Space Flight Center, Code 612.1 , Greenbelt, MD 20771 United States
AB: The lower ionospheres of all planetary atmospheres and any of those satellites that hold substantial atmospheres have a high likelihood of containing complex layers of metallic ions and their neutral species. These metal species arise from the ablation and subsequent ionization of small particles from the solar system cloud of meteoroids impacting their atmospheres. Venus is no exception and is unique in that it has the highest upper limit for incoming meteoroid velocities in the solar system and its extremely slow atmosphere revolution makes a one-dimensional modeling a better approximation than for other faster rotating bodies in the solar system. Previous modeling of one of the major meteoroid species, Mg, showed that indeed a prominent metallic layer expected with ion concentrations comparable to those seen at Earth. However the modeled Mg⁺ peak altitude was lower than any total electron density peak observed by spacecraft radio occultation measurements at Venus. A further analysis adding the contributions of other metal species and their chemistry has now shown that each metal ion species layers at a different altitude. Indeed the metal species Fe has its counterpart ion layer above 120 km in a region where there are sometimes traces of occultation electron density structures. Also, the new analysis includes estimates of the visual magnitudes of typical meteors as they would be observed from a satellite above the atmosphere.
DE: 5405 Atmospheres (0343, 1060)
DE: 5435 Ionospheres (2459)
DE: 6213 Dust
DE: 6245 Meteors
DE: 6295 Venus
SC: Planetary Sciences [P]
MN: Fall Meeting 2005