Water-group pickup ions from Europa-genic neutrals orbiting Jupiter
- 1Department of Astrophysical Sciences, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey, USA
- 2The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Maryland, USA
- 3Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, Colorado, USA
- 4Geophysical Institute, University of Alaska Fairbanks, Fairbanks, AK, USA
- 5Southwest Research Institute, San Antonio, Texas, USA
- 6Space Sciences Laboratory, University of California at Berkeley, 7 Gauss Way, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA
- 7Institut de Recherche en Astrophysique et Planétologie, CNRS-UPS-CNES, Toulouse, France
- 8Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Texas at San Antonio, San Antonio, Texas, USA
Water-group gas continuously escapes from Jupiter’s icy moons to form co-orbiting populations of particles, or neutral toroidal clouds. We report the first observations of H2+ pickup ions in Jupiter’s magnetosphere from 13-18 Jovian radii, confirming the presence of a neutral H2 toroidal cloud. Pickup ion densities are consistent with an advecting Europa-genic cloud source. As the observed H2+ ions are originally produced from H2 lost from Europa, the abundance of detected ions allows us to determine that ~1 kg/s of neutral H2 is lost from Europa. Hence, these observations presented here for the first time directly measure ions from a neutral H2 toroidal cloud at Jupiter, prove the cloud provides an additional plasma source in Jupiter’s magnetosphere, and provide the most direct constraints on Europa’s loss of neutral H2 via observations of the neutral toroidal cloud’s primary loss process – pickup ions.
How to cite: Szalay, J., Smith, T., Zirnstein, E., McComas, D., Begley, L., Bagenal, F., Delamere, P., Wilson, R., Valek, P., Poppe, A., Nenon, Q., Allegrini, F., Ebert, R., and Bolton, S.: Water-group pickup ions from Europa-genic neutrals orbiting Jupiter, Europlanet Science Congress 2022, Granada, Spain, 18–23 Sep 2022, EPSC2022-702, https://doi.org/10.5194/epsc2022-702, 2022.
