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Science 3 April 1998:
Vol. 280. no. 5360, pp. 88 - 91
DOI: 10.1126/science.280.5360.88
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Reports

Capture of Interplanetary and Interstellar Dust by the Jovian Magnetosphere

Joshua E. Colwell, * Mihály Horányi, Eberhard Grün

Interplanetary and interstellar dust grains entering Jupiter's magnetosphere form a detectable diffuse faint ring of exogenic material. This ring is composed of particles in the size range of 0.5 to 1.5 micrometers on retrograde and prograde orbits in a 4:1 ratio, with semimajor axes 3 < a < 20 jovian radii, eccentricities 0.1 < e < 0.3, and inclinations i lsim 20 degrees or i gsim  160 degrees. The size range and the orbital characteristics are consistent with in situ detections of micrometer-sized grains by the Galileo dust detector, and the measured rates match the number densities predicted from numerical trajectory integrations.

J. E. Colwell and M. Horányi, Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309-0392, USA.
E. Grün, Max Planck Institut für Kernphysik, 6900 Heidelberg, Germany.
*   To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: colwell{at}casper.colorado.edu

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Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)