Welcome to the Galileo Plasma Wave Investigation!

The Galileo Plasma Wave Investigation is designed to study naturally-occurring waves in the Jovian environment These waves can be of two general varieties:

1. Radio waves -- waves which are transmitted from a distant source and travel to Galileo with little regard to the medium between the source and the spacecraft.

2. Plasma waves -- waves which are localized disturbances in the plasma around Jupiter.

A plasma is a hot gas consisting of negatively-charged electrons and positively charged ions. Familiar plasmas on Earth include a candle flame and the glowing gas in a neon sign.

The Plasma Wave instrument is simply a specialized radio which can detect signals at frequencies as low as 6 Hz (6 cycles per second) to as high as 6 MHz (6 million cycles per second). Therefore, this instrument could detect AM and shortwave radio at Earth as well as much lower frequencies. It has two antennas; one, called a dipole antenna, detects the electric component of waves and the other, called a search coil magnetometer, detects the magnetic component of waves.