The sodium zenocorona

A recent narrow-band-filtered CCD image by Mendillo et al. (1990) has shown that a sodium corona, produced near Io, extends at least 400 Jupiter radii in the planet's equatorial plane. Isophotes indicate that the polar to equatorial extents are in about 1 to 3 proportions. The image can be reproduced by a model which includes both a high- and an intermediate-speed distribution, with source rates of 2.2 and 1.1 x 10 exp 26 atoms/s, respectively. The high-speed distribution was ejected from Io with a velocity tangential to the satellite orbit of 57 km/s (about 74 km/s relative to Jupiter) plus an isotropic Maxwellian velocity distribution of about 25 km/s. This distribution likely corresponds to a charge exchange source of plasma torus sodium ions which are neutralized in the near-Io atmosphere and are ejected relative to Jupiter with a corotational velocity (74 km/s) plus a thermal ion (25 km/s) Maxwellian distribution. The intermediate speed distribution was ejected from Io with a tangential speed near 20 km/s (37 km/s relative to Jupiter) plus an isotropic Maxwellian velocity distribution of about 12 km/s. This distribution corresponds to the same nonthermal sodium atoms earlier identified near Io in the sodium directional features (Pilcher et al., 1984).