✍ Scribed by Ahilleas N Maurellis; Thomas E Cravens
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
We study the thermosphere and ionosphere effects of the July 1994 Comet P/Shoemaker-Levy 9 impacts with Jupiter using a one-dimensional transport model which includes detailed neutralneutral and ion-neutral chemistry and diffusive vertical transport for a variety of sulfur, nitrogen, and oxygen molecular species observed at the time of the impacts. The model uses a background neutral atmosphere based on the temperature profile obtained from Galileo probe measurements and a basic ionospheric model which satisfies current observational constraints on electron and H + 3 densities.
After the influx of impact-related neutral species into the ionosphere, new ion species such as S + , H 3 CS + , and NH + 4 (and in some cases H 3 O + , SO + , and HCO + ) appear along with the usual ionospheric species. Our model predicts that S + begins to control the density of the ionospheric peak some hours after impact. The H + 3 column density decreases by a factor ranging from 5 to 100, depending on the amount of water present. This is consistent with most nonauroral observations of H + 3 emission during and just after the impact period. The model predicts electron density column enhancements of up to a factor of 10 for post-impact times less than a few days as well as significant abundances of S 2 at the Galileo observational epoch, though at altitudes below ionospheric levels. Perhaps of more general interest is the compilation, presented here, of the ionospheric mechanisms involved in a comprehensive sulfur, nitrogen, and oxygen chemical model which may be of considerable use in future studies of ablation or particle precipitation in any hydrogendominated outer-planet ionosphere.
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tunity to observe the effects of a sizable cometary collision on a major planet. But uncertainties as to the exact sizes ## The observation of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9's collision with and densities of the impacting fragments (Weaver et al. Jupiter in July of 1994 by the United Kingdom Infrared Te