Seminar

Io, one of the main moons of Jupiter, is the solar system’s most volcanically active body. This volcanic activity results in the ejection of material in Io’s atmosphere, which will then escape to form various structures in the magnetosphere of Jupiter. These include the plasma torus and clouds of neutral particles. The physical processes involved in the escape of particles are not yet fully understood. In order to understand it, several observations have been realized with the TRAPPIST telescopes in 2014-2015 and 2021 with a sodium filter, allowing to study one of the neutral clouds: the sodium jet. These observations allowed to obtain some physical properties of the sodium jet, like its size, orientation, and luminosity for some of the nights of observation. Further similar observations are planned with several telescopes with objective to establish its time variability and to try to link this variability with what is observed on Io and in the plasma torus. With this and a study of the plasma torus as well as Io footprint, the final goal of this study would be to understand the interaction between Io and the magnetosphere of Jupiter, from the volcanism on the moon to the aurora on the planet.

Additional information: Mr. Alexandre DE BECKER, u3008664@connect.hku.hk