Environments in the Outer Solar System

Abstract

The outer planets of our solar system Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune are fascinating objects on their own. Their intrinsic magnetic fields form magnetic environments (so called magnetospheres) in which charged and neutral particles and dust are produced, lost or being transported through the system. These magnetic environments of the gas giants can be envisaged as huge plasma laboratories in space in which electromagnetic waves, current systems, particle transport mechanisms, acceleration processes and other phenomena act and interact with the large number of moons in orbit around those massive planets. In general it is necessary to describe and study the global environments (magnetospheres) of the gas giants, its global configuration with its large-scale transport processes; and, in combination, to study the local environments of the moons as well, e.g. the interaction processes between the magnetospheric plasma and the exosphere/atmosphere/magnetosphere of the moon acting on time scales of seconds to days. These local exchange processes include also the gravity, shape, rotation, astrometric observations and orbital parameters of the icy moons in those huge systems. It is the purpose of this chapter of the book to describe the variety of the magnetic environments of the outer planets in a broad overview, globally and locally, and to show that those exchange processes can dramatically influence the surfaces and exospheres/atmospheres of the moons and they can also be used as a tool to study the overall physics of systems as a whole.