Pulsed radio emission from Jupiter

Abstract

The planetary radio astronomy experiment on board both Voyager spacecraft detected bursts of pulsed radio emission at frequencies below about 1.5 MHz which originate near Jupiter. The bursts have a pulse repetition frequency which varies between 0.3 and 3 Hz, a pulse duration between 0.15 and 1.0 s, and a highly variable bandwidth. Before encounter they appear unpolarized, while after encounter roughly half of the bursts appear right‐hand and half left‐hand circularly polarized. At all times the occurrence probability of bursts above 1 MHz and below 0.3 MHz is lowest around 200° in system III longitude (λIII). The importance of λIII = 200° to these bursts is reminiscent of the importance of the same longitude to the familiar hectometric and broadband kilometric Jovian radiation.