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(*) Gratefully acknowledging the authors of Fortran, Perl, Rotater, GraphicConverter, GifBuilder, and the mentoring-plus-early-code by Mihaly Horanyi of the Jovian dust streams dynamics and charging.
Here are the xyz end points of 120,000 dust particles with 10 varying parameters, seen after 15 hours of traveling via a detailed physics simulation that tracks the particles' trajectories and charges. The dust particles were released with Keplerian velocities from a point source (1-6 degrees) just outside of Io's orbit and the plasma torus at 6.2 Jupiter radii, so this glimpse is what a 'burst' of dust of widely varying characteristics might look like from Io and/or a release of dust through the plasma torus. At the other extreme, an instaneous ring source produces a different (and still dramatic) warped cloud display.
Some particles do not escape, and remain bound in the Jovian system. These are shown orbiting in the inner region between 6.2 and 50 Jupiter radii away from Jupiter's center, and you can see them spanning the ecliptic plane of Io in the Jovian system. This inner region is the focus for the fly-through of this visualization, so that the viewer is carried and swung along ( :-) ) the trajectory 'trail' from the outside of the trail to the inside.
See the visualization ! [Animated GIF, 320 kBytes]
The different colors represent different particle radius : "sz"
red: 5 <= sz <= 7 nanometers
green: 7 < sz <= 9 nanometers
blue: 9 < sz <= 12 nanometers
gold: 12 < sz <= 16 nanometers
purple: 16 < sz <= 20 nanometers
cyan (light blue): sz > 20 nanometers
(Left view.)
(Right view.)
(Face-on view.)
(Zooming in.)
Notice the striation of the colors of the ejected particles in the 'trail'. This natural separation by particle size is due to the forces acting on the particles - the smallest (less than 10 nanometers) dust particles are most strongly affected by the electromagnetic force and the largest (greater than 20 nanometers) by the Jovian gravitation field force.
The smallest particles (red, green) escape the Jovian magnetosphere quickly with speeds greater than 300 km/sec, and the largest particles in this simulation (purple, cyan) barely escape and move sluggishly with speeds on the order of 100 km/sec; you can see them positioned closest to those that are in bound orbits.
Sometimes, trails of the Jovian dust streams look like spaghetti.
Graps Home Cosmic Dust Group Home
Created by Amara Graps.
Last Modified by Amara Graps on February 3, 2003.
