Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
A rendering of the magnetic field lines of the magnetosphere of the Earth. In astronomy and planetary science, a magnetosphere is a region of space surrounding an astronomical object in which charged particles are affected by that object's magnetic field. [1] [2] It is created by a celestial body with an active interior dynamo.
The Van Allen radiation belt is a zone of energetic charged particles, most of which originate from the solar wind, that are captured by and held around a planet by that planet's magnetosphere. Earth has two such belts, and sometimes others may be temporarily created.
This magnetosphere is efficient at deflecting the solar wind particles from the Sun. The moon Titan orbits within the outer part of Saturn's magnetosphere and contributes plasma from the ionized particles in Titan's outer atmosphere. [32] Saturn's magnetosphere, like Earth's, produces aurorae. [85]
For the Earth, this could have been an external magnetic field. Early in its history the Sun went through a T-Tauri phase in which the solar wind would have had a magnetic field orders of magnitude larger than the present solar wind. [60] However, much of the field may have been screened out by the Earth's mantle.
Saturn's largest moon Titan also has a substantial atmosphere thicker than that of Earth; [118] Neptune's largest moon Triton [119] and the dwarf planet Pluto have more tenuous atmospheres. [120] The larger giant planets are massive enough to keep large amounts of the light gases hydrogen and helium, whereas the smaller planets lose these gases ...
The magnetosphere of Jupiter is the cavity created in the solar wind by Jupiter's magnetic field.Extending up to seven million kilometers in the Sun's direction and almost to the orbit of Saturn in the opposite direction, Jupiter's magnetosphere is the largest and most powerful of any planetary magnetosphere in the Solar System, and by volume the largest known continuous structure in the Solar ...
Earth does have a sodium layer in the upper atmosphere. "For me, the most exciting part of this study is that it operates at the very limits of what is possible with current telescopes and ...
As with Earth's magnetosphere, the boundary separating the solar wind's plasma from that within Saturn's magnetosphere is called the magnetopause. [2] The magnetopause distance from the planet's center at the subsolar point [ note 1 ] varies widely from 16 to 27 R s (R s =60,330 km is the equatorial radius of Saturn).