EVIDENCE FOR AN IO PLASMA TORUS INFLUENCE ON HIGH-LATITUDE JOVIAN RADIO-EMISSION

We report the discovery with the Ulysses unified radio and plasma wave (URAP) instrument of features in the Jovian hectometer (HOM) waveleng th radio emission spectrum which recur with a period about 2-4% longer than the Jovian System III rotation period. We conclude that the auro ral HOM emissions are periodically blocked from ''view'' by regions in the torus of higher than average density and that these regions rotat e more slowly than System III and persist for considerable intervals o f time. We have reexamined the Voyager planetary radio astronomy (PRA) data taken during the flybys in 1979 and have found similar features in the HOM spectrum. Contemporaneous observations by Brown (1994) show an [SII] emission line enhancement in the Io plasma torus that rotate s more slowly than System III by the same amount as the HOM feature.