One year of Galileo dust data from the Jovian system: 1996

The dust detector system onboard Galileo has recoding dust impacts incircumjovian space since the spacecraft was injected into a bound orbitabout Jupiter in December 1995. This is the sixth in a series of papersdedicated to presenting Galileo and Ulysses dust data. We present datafrom the Galileo dust instrument for the period January to December 1996when the spacecraft completed four orbits about Jupiter (G1, G2, C3 andE4). Data were obtained as high-resolution realtime science data orrecorded data during a time period of 100 days, or via memory read-outsduring the remaining times. Because the data transmission rate of thespacecraft is very low, the complete data set (i.e. all parametersmeasured by the instrument during impact of a dust particle) for only 2%(5353) of all particles detected could be transmitted to Earth; theother particles were only counted. Together with the data for 2883particles detected during Galileo's interplanetary cruise and publishedearlier, complete data of 8236 particles detected by the Galileo dustinstrument from 1989 to 1996 are now available. The majority ofparticles detected are tiny grains (about 10nm in radius) originatingfrom Jupiter's innermost Galilean moon Io. These grains have beendetected throughout the Jovian system and the highest impact ratesexceeded 100min-1. A small number of grains has been detectedin the close vicinity of the Galilean moons Europa, Ganymede andCallisto which belong to impact-generated dust clouds formed by (mostlysubmicrometer sized) ejecta from the surfaces of the moons (Krügeret al., /1999e. Nature 399, 558). Impacts of submicrometer to micrometersized grains have been detected throughout the Jovian system andespecially in the region between the Galilean moons