Jovian Dust Streams History
The Jovian dust stream story has a 20 year history that began when Io's volcanoes were discovered by the Voyager 1 spacecraft in 1979. Upon that discovery (the first time that active volcanism was seen on another body in the solar system), E. Grün (MPI-K, Heidelberg, Germany), G. Morfill (MPE, Garching, Germany), and T.V. Johnson (JPL, Pasadena, USA) published a series of papers giving a theoretical basis for Io dust generation in the Jupiter system. However, no dust detector instrument was onboard the Voyager spacecraft to detect any dust grains. Thirteen years later, the Ulysses spacecraft dust detector, built by E. Grün and his colleagues, observed periodic dust bursts from Jupiter's vicinity. The Jovian dust streams at Ulysses' distance were observed to have periods similar to the Sun's rotation period. The Jovian dust streams at Galileo's close distance have a different periodic signature.
Since 1993, investigations proceeded to find the source of the Jovian dust streams and to explain the periodic bursts seen by Ulysses and the other periodicities seen by Galileo. One investigation by M. Horányi (LASP, Boulder, Colorado), Morfill, Grün, and others suggested Io as a source for the dust streams, based on physical arguments for dust charging in the Jovian plasma environment and the dust motions' angular momentum. An alternative origin of Jupiter's gossamer ring was suggested by D. Hamilton (University of Maryland) and J. Burns (Cornell, New York) based on the masses and velocities of the particles ejected from the Jovian system.
MPI-K Dust Group