HR: 17:45h
AN: SM34A-08    [Abstracts]
TI: The Detection of a Striking Increase in the Microwave Emission from Jupiter's Radiation Belts in June and July 2003.
AU: * Klein, M J
EM: mike.klein@jpl.nasa.gov
AF: Jet Propulsion Laboratory/Caltech, 4800 Oak Grove Drive, Pasadena, CA 91109 United States
AU: Bolton, S J
EM: Scott.J.Bolton@jpl.nasa.gov
AF: Jet Propulsion Laboratory/Caltech, 4800 Oak Grove Drive, Pasadena, CA 91109 United States
AU: Levin, S M
EM: Steven.M.Levin@jpl.nasa.gov
AF: Jet Propulsion Laboratory/Caltech, 4800 Oak Grove Drive, Pasadena, CA 91109 United States
AU: Mac Laren, D
EM: dmaclaren@lcer.org
AF: Lewis Center for Educational Research, 17500 Mana Road, Apple Valley, CA 92307 United States
AB: Synchrotron emission from energetic electrons in Jupiter's radiation belts has been routinely measured by ground-based radio telescopes for three decades. The NASA-JPL Jupiter Patrol, using NASA's Deep Space Network (DSN) antennas at Goldstone, CA., has reported significant (5 %-to-30 %) variations in Jupiter's flux density near 13-cm wavelength with timescales from a few days to several months. In this paper we report observations of an unusually sudden increase in flux density from 3.8 to 4.3 Jy that occurred between 20 June and 15 July 2003. The rate of increase (approximately 0.6 percent per day) is the steepest increase that we have detected with the exception of the increase in 1994 following the impacts of fragments from comet Shoemaker-Levy 9. More than half of the reported observations were conducted by middle- and high school students from classrooms across the nation. The students and their teachers are participants in the Goldstone-Apple Valley Radio Telescope (GAVRT) science education project, which is a partnership involving NASA, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the Lewis Center for Educational Research (LCER) in Apple Valley, CA. Working with the Lewis Center over the Internet, GAVRT students conduct remotely controlled radio astronomy observations using 34-m antennas at Goldstone. We also report preliminary results from a special GAVRT observing campaign conducted in the fall of 2003 before, during and after the controlled impact of the Galileo spacecraft into the Jovian atmosphere. Simultaneous observations were made at 3.5 and 13 cm wavelengths three-to-four days per week. These data are being incorporated into synchrotron emission studies of the state of the radiation belts during the last weeks of the Galileo mission. The JPL contribution to this paper was performed at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
DE: 6218 Jovian satellites
DE: 6220 Jupiter
DE: 6954 Radio astronomy
DE: 2756 Planetary magnetospheres (5443, 5737, 6030)
SC: SPA-Magnetospheric Physics [SM]
MN: 2004 AGU Fall Meeting