SOME INTERACTIONS BETWEEN DUST FROM COMET SHOEMAKER-LEVY-9 AND JUPITER

Dust components of Comet Shoemaker-Levy-9 will traverse Jupiter's magn etosphere for an extended period surrounding the July 1994 impact of t he nuclear fragments with Jupiter's atmosphere. We focus here on three interactions that are, in principle, visible from Earth: one in which the magnetosphere could affect the comet, one in which the comet coul d affect the magnetosphere, and one caused by dust impacting the upper atmosphere. These interactions are (1) electrostatic disruption of du st grains, which could permit remote optical imaging of the magnetosph ere, (2) energy degradation of trapped relativistic electrons, which m ight produce observable changes in their synchrotron emission spectrum , and (3) a coma-induced meteor shower in view of Earth-based telescop es. We find these various interactions may be weak, possibly unobserva ble. If these interactions prove detectable, they can provide unique d iagnostic tools for the magnetosphere, the comet/magnetosphere interac tion, and the mass flux and size distribution of dust striking the upp er atmosphere.