the pressure exerted by the solar wind, which in turn depends on solar activity. The average magnetopause standoff distance is about 22 Rs. In front of the magnetopause (at the distance of about 27 Rs from the planet) lies the bow shock, a wake-like disturbance in the solar wind caused by its collision with the magnetosphere. The region between the bow shock and magnetopause is called the magnetosheath. At the opposite side of the planet, the solar wind stretches Saturn's magnetic field lines into a long, trailing magnetotail, which consists of two lobes, with the magnetic field in the northern lobe pointing away from Saturn and the southern pointing towards it. The lobes are separated by a thin layer of plasma called the tail current sheet. Like Earth's, Saturn's tail is a channel through which solar plasma enters the inner regions of the magnetosphere. Similar to Jupiter, the tail is the conduit through which the plasma of the internal magnetospheric origin leaves the magnetosphere. The plasma moving from the tail to the inner magnetosphere is heated and forms a number of radiation belts. Magnetospheric regions Saturn's magnetosphere is often divided into four regions. The innermost region co-located with Saturn's planetary rings, inside approximately 3 Rs, has a strictly dipolar magnetic field. It is largely devoid of plasma, which is absorbed by ring particles, although the radiation belts of Saturn are located in this innermost region just inside and outside the rings. The second region between 3 and 6 Rs contains the cold plasma torus and is called the inner magnetosphere. It contains the densest plasma in the saturnian system. The plasma in the torus originates from the inner icy moons and particularly from Enceladus. The magnetic field in this region is also mostly dipolar. The third region lies between 6 and 12–14 Rs and is called the dynamic and extended plasma sheet. The magnetic field in this region is stretched and non-dipolar, whereas the plasma is confined to a thin equatorial plasma sheet. The fourth outermost region is located beyond 15 Rs at high latitudes and continues up to magnetopause boundary. It is characterized by a low plasma density and a variable, non-dipolar magnetic field strongly influenced by the Solar wind. In the outer parts of Saturn's magnetosphere beyond approximately 15–20 Rs the magnetic field near the equatorial plane is highly stretched and forms a disk-like structure called magnetodisk. The