Saturn electron model derived from "Raytracing analysis for the propagation of Saturn narrowband emission within the Saturnian magnetosphere"

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.25935/4fm1-xh69
• Publisher: PADC
• Citation: Wu, S., U. Taubenschuss, S. Ye, G. Fischer, B. Cecconi, M. Wang, T. Tao, M. Long, P. Lu, Y. Liu, W. S. Kurth, C. M. Jackman, P. Zarka, C. Baskevitech, X. Feng. 2023 Saturn electron model derived from "Raytracing analysis for the propagation of Saturn narrowband emission within the Saturnian magnetosphere" (Version 1.0) [Data set]. PADC. https://doi.org/10.25935/4fm1-xh69

Link to data repository

• content

Description

The electron density model is constructed by merging various existing models (Persoon et al., 2006; 2019; 2020). The mainly background electron density is constructed using the model of Persoon et al. (2006), which is designed for latitudes up to 20° and ranging from L = [3.6 8.6]. We extrapolate values to higher latitudes and larger L shells due to its rapid electron density decrease beyond the plasma torus region. The plasma torus electron density is from the diffusive equilibrium model by Persoon et al. (2020). This model captures finer structures at the outer boundary of the plasma torus. The ionosphere model by Persoon et al. (2019) is utilized and only the northern hemisphere’s model is considered. The connection region between the different models are manually removed and later filled with an inpainting algorithm based on a least-square method (Crema et al., 2020). Furthermore, we construct a magnetosheath using the magnetopause model by Kanani et al. (2010) and the bow shock model by Went et al. (2011), considering a solar wind dynamic pressure of 0.036 nPa. The electron density within the magnetosheath is derived using the Rankine-Hugoniot relation, by assuming typical solar wind parameters near Saturn (Echer, 2019). Note that for clarity, the size of the magnetosheath is reduced in the calculation with the bow shock shifted inward by 5 Rs (Saturn Radii = 60268 km). Detailed parameters are described in Wu et al., (2023) with title "Raytracing analysis for the propagation of Saturn narrowband emission within the Saturnian magnetosphere"

Data Format

Data is available as .txt files.

TXT data

This archive consists three .txt files, giving the meridianoal electron density model at Saturn.

• "File_A" is the electron density 2D matrix with a dimension of 3001*3001. The values are the electron number density in unit of /cm^3.
• "File_B: and "File_C" are identical and they give the coordinates in X and Z direction () in unit of Saturn radii from -30 Rs to 30 Rs, and each dimension consists of 3001 values correspond to "File_A".

X and Z direction are defined in the meridianoal plane with Z axis parallel to the rotation axis of Saturn and X axis perpendicular to Z. X is the same the rho in the cylindrical corrdinate.

The data is provided as yearly files:

• File_A_SaturnEdensity_Persoon_et_al_06_19_20_Siyuan_Wu_v20230921.txt] (84 MB)
• File_B_SaturnEdensity_Persoon_et_al_06_19_20_Siyuan_Wu_v20230921.txt] (17 kB)
• File_C_SaturnEdensity_Persoon_et_al_06_19_20_Siyuan_Wu_v20230921.txt] (17 kB)

Coverage and sampling

• Target: Saturn

Acknowledgements

• Wu, S.Y., Taubenschuss, U., Ye, S.Y., Fischer, G., Cecconi, B., Wang, M.M., et al. (2023). Raytracing analysis for the propagation of Saturn narrowband emission within the Saturnian magnetosphere. In preparation.
• Persoon, A. M., Gurnett, D. A., Kurth, W. S., & Groene, J. B. (2006). A simple scale height model of the electron density in Saturn’s plasma disk. Geophysical Research Letters, 33(18). https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1029/2006GL027090
• Persoon, A. M., Kurth, W. S., Gurnett, D. A., Groene, J. B., Sulaiman, A. H., Wahlund, J. E., et al. (2019). Electron density distributions in Saturn’s ionosphere. Geophysical Research Letters, 46(6), 3061–3068. https://doi.org/10.1029/2018GL078020
• Persoon, A. M., Kurth, W. S., Gurnett, D. A., Faden, J. B., Groene, J. B., Morooka, M. W., et al. (2020). Distribution in Saturn’s inner magnetosphere From 2.4 to 10 RS: A diffusive equilibrium model. Journal of Geophysical Research: Space Physics, 125(3), 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1029/2019JA027545
• Crema, S., Llena, M., Calsamiglia, A., Estrany, J., Marchi, L., Vericat, D., & Cavalli, M. (2020). Can inpainting improve digital terrain analysis? Comparing techniques for void filling, surface reconstruction and geomorphometric analyses. Earth Surface Processes and Landforms, 755(January), 736–755. https://doi.org/10.1002/esp.4739