DIX Planetary Science Seminar

All four giant planets in the solar system feature ring systems. The Halo ring of Jupiter is vertically thick which likely is due to interaction of the dust with Jupiter's strong magnetic field. The NASA Juno mission offers a unique opportunity to probe the Jovian ring system. In particular, the WAVES instrument on board enables in-situ detection of dust impacts via the electric field signal the impacts produce. In the first part of this presentation, I will show the newly derived dust impact rates and inferred dust number densities of ring particles in the Jupiter system along the Juno trajectory, including pronounced north–south asymmetry in the inferred dust number density, as well as a localized density enhancement during a limited number of Juno orbits. Due to the monotonic evolution of the location of the Juno equatorial crossing in the local-time radial distance space, whether this density enhancement represents a transient ring or a spatially confined ring arc remains to be elucidated.

In the second part of this presentation, I will provide a brief overview and update on the Earth's magnetic field as viewed by the recently launched NASA TRACERS mission, which aims to disentangle spatial versus temporal variation of magnetic reconnection between the solar wind magnetic field and the Earth's magnetic field.