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Saturn

At Saturn, the magnetosphere separates more readily into decoupled inner and outer regions. In the outer part, the material and energy budgets of the the Titan- magnetosphere interaction have yet to be worked out in full detail, In the inner magnetosphere, the main objective is to determine the structure, composition and source regions of the ambient plasma.The recent Hubble observation of a dense cloud of hydroxl, OH, in the Tethys region and near the rings has introduced a totally new element into inner magnetosphere physics. It will be necessary to reanalyze the composition questions of the inner magnetosphere in order to integrate this finding into a coherent picture. A totally new paradigm of magnetosphere plasma physics, different from that which has worked so well at Earth and Jupiter, will have to be devised. At Earth and Jupiter, the processes typical of fully ionized plasmas are the fastest and the plasma can be treated as such. At Saturn and apparently at Neptune, the interactions between the plasma and the neutral gas is dominant and the physics will be similar to that of a planetary ionosphere, namely, dominated by the neutral component.