Jupiter's S bursts and Io

Abstract

THE correlation between the occurrence of the Jupiter radio bursts and the position of the satellite Io has been reported to exist mainly for wave frequencies between 20 MHz and 40 MHz (ref. 1). Below about 17 MHz little correlation has been observed². Jupiter's radio bursts may be roughly divided into two classes: the long, or L, bursts with a single frequency duration of seconds and the short, or S, bursts with a single frequency duration of 1–10 ms. Previous investigations of the Io effect have not distinguished between these two types of bursts. Here we describe a separate study on S bursts in which their occurrence probability is found to be strongly correlated with the position of Io above and below 17 MHz. In order to detect this result, spectrum analysers capable of separating out the S bursts from other jovian emission over a large frequency range had to be used³.