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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).
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 position of the Sun would be far to the left in this image. The magnetopause is the abrupt boundary between a magnetosphere and the surrounding plasma. For planetary science, the magnetopause is the boundary between the planet's magnetic field and the solar wind. The location of the magnetopause is determined by the balance between the ...
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.
Orbiting satellites would be at risk, as a weakened magnetic field would offer less protection against space weather. While life on Earth has weathered multiple magnetic reversals over more than ...
Such a visit likely would have shown that the Uranus magnetosphere is similar to those of Jupiter, Saturn and Neptune, the solar system's other giant planets, the researchers said.
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.
Schematic of Earth's magnetosphere, showing the relative position of the magnetosheath. Scientific research into the exact nature of the magnetosheath has been limited due to a longstanding misconception that it was a byproduct of the bow shock/magnetopause interaction and had no inherently important properties of its own.