The Io plasma torus during one rotation of Jupiter. The
torus surrounds Jupiter near Io's orbit, and is tilted because of the tilt
in Jupiter's magnetic field.
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A cartoon of the Jupiter magnetosphere by John Spencer, Lowell Observatory. |
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The Io plasma torus during one rotation of Jupiter. The
torus surrounds Jupiter near Io's orbit, and is tilted because of the tilt
in Jupiter's magnetic field.
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And the required picture from the SL9 impacts. (more information in the full image.) |
| The Io torus with a magnetic dipole field line drawn in. See how the "ribbon" is parallel to the field line, and also how the torus is offset to the left (dawn) side. | |
Want to see an animation of the the torus & sodium cloud over one Jupiter rotation? [1.6MB]
The torus images & animation above were made possible by grants from NASA's Planetary Astronomy division and the National Science Foundation's PYI program.
nick@ganesh.colorado.edu