HR: 11:50h
AN: P52B-07    [Abstracts]
TI: The character of the Enceladus water plume during the three Cassini flybys based on a 3-D MHD model comparison
AU: * Jia, Y D
EM: yingdong@ucla.edu
AF: IGPP, UCLA, 595 Charles Young Dr. East, Los Angeles, CA 90095,
AU: Khurana, K K
EM: kkhurana@igpp.ucla.edu
AF: IGPP, UCLA, 595 Charles Young Dr. East, Los Angeles, CA 90095,
AU: Russell, C T
EM: ctrussel@igpp.ucla.edu
AF: IGPP, UCLA, 595 Charles Young Dr. East, Los Angeles, CA 90095,
AU: Gombosi, T I
EM: tamas@umich.edu
AF: UMich, SRB, 2455 Hayward, Ann Arbor, MI 48109,
AB: The Cassini spacecraft made three close flybys of Enceladus in 2005. The magnetic field data collected from these flybys have helped to clarify the importance of Enceladus particle production for the maintenance of the E ring surrounding Saturn. However, some new questions arise based on these flybys, including how is the neutral cloud distributed and how does it vary temporally, as well as how does the neutral cloud affect the plasma distribution in the strong ambient Saturnian magnetic field. In this work we apply our 3-D magnetohydrodynamic model to the simulation of the interaction between the Saturnian corotational plasma flow and the Enceladus obstacle.The effect of different neutral distributions, ionization rates, and charge exchange rates are examined and compared with the Cassini magnetometer data. Based on this MHD result, the field perturbation by dust particles is also investigated.
DE: 2732 Magnetosphere interactions with satellites and rings
DE: 2753 Numerical modeling
DE: 6280 Saturnian satellites
DE: 7849 Plasma interactions with dust and aerosols (2461)
SC: Planetary Sciences [P]
MN: 2007 Fall Meeting