Acknowledgement. We thank Science for their permission to use an excerpt from:
Ness, N. F., et al. 1982. Magnetic Field Studies by Voyager 2:Preliminary Results at Saturn. Science 215 (4532), 558-563. (Excerpt from p. 563.)
Ring plane crossing. Because of the special circumstances (15, 16) surrounding the crossing of the ring plane by Voyager 2, we have investigated the detailed 60 msec data during a 16-minute interval centered on the nominal crossing time at day 238, hour 0418, for evidence of any unusual anomalies, and the central 6 minutes of these data are plotted in Fig. 8 . There are no sudden changes evident or quasi-periodic variations that could be associated with any mechanical motion of the magnetometer sensor or with any localized field perturbations or wave phenomena. The regular toggling of the individual components between adjacent digital values is readily evident because the magnetic field components changed gradually throughout this sample. Note the very expanded scale of the plots in this figure, where the field intensity is approximately 1100 nT, so that the quantization step size of the 12-bit A-D converter yields a +/- 0.5-nT uncertainty. This is well above the intrinsic noise level of the sensors measured in flight, which is less than 0.006 nT RMS equivalent over the 8.3-Hz bandwidth.
We conclude that there is no evidence in these detailed data for any special event or events which would have disturbed either the assumed orientation of magnetometer sensors or the ambient field at the location. The sensitivity is limited only by the quantization step size and the vector sample rate of (16 2/3) /second (Nyquist frequency = 8.33 Hz). The quantization limitation translates to an insensitivity to angular variations of less than 1.5 arc minutes. Short time scale events manifested as magnetic disturbances would be progressively attenuated by the instrument frequency roll-off characteristics beyond 5 Hz.
Last updated Feb-27-1997