SPRG Seminars
March 29, 2011:
"New Perspectives of Titan's Plasma Interaction from MHD modeling of the Cassini flybys"
Yingjuan Ma, UCLA
Imperial
As the largest moon of Saturn, Titan has a well extended atmosphere/ionosphere system and no appreciable intrinsic magnetic field. Its interaction with the rotating plasma flow in the Saturnian magnetosphere is controlled by both the upstream plasma and Titan's Saturn local time. The interaction results in a complex plasma environment near Titan: the plasma flow slows down due to ion pick-up and the resulting mass loading, the magnetic field lines pile-up in front of the obstacle and form an induced bipolar magnetotail in the wake region. In this presentation, new perspectives will be discussed about Titan's plasma interaction based on MHD modeling of a few special Cassini flybys of Titan.