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J. Wilson, M. Mendillo, J. Baumgardner (BU/Center for Space Physics)
Observations of Io's sodium clouds from February to June 2005 indicate that Io was in the ``quiet" state atmospheric escape, as postulated by Mendillo et al. (2004). This is the first year of a 3-year project to monitor Io's sodium clouds (which are indicative of atmospheric loss from Io) and sulfur ions in the plasma torus (representative of the magnetospheric heavy ion source) with groundbased images. Our goal is to compare variability in the clouds and torus with observations of Io's volcanic infrared ``hot spots" (e.g., Marchis et al. 2005) in order to track the flow of mass from Io's volcanoes into Jupiter's magnetosphere. This research is funded in part by NASA's Planetary Astronomy Program.
Marchis et al., Keck AO survey of Io global volcanic activity between 2 and 5 microns, Icarus, 176, 96-122, 2005.
Mendillo et al., Io's volcanic control of Jupiter's extended neutral clouds, Icarus, 170, 430-442, 2004.
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The author(s) of this abstract have provided an email address for comments about the abstract: jkwilson@bu.edu
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Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, 37 #3
© 2004. The American Astronomical Soceity.