Search Publications
Multipoint analysis of compressive fluctuations in the fast and slow solar wind
Escoubet, C. P.; Narita, Y.; Li, X. +2 more
Compressible turbulence in the solar wind is a topic of much recent debate. To understand the various compressive fluctuations at scales comparable to proton characteristic lengths, we use multipoint magnetic field and density data (derived from spacecraft potential which allows higher time resolution than is typically possible than with particle …
Mars plasma system response to solar wind disturbances during solar minimum
Holmström, M.; Odstrcil, D.; Lester, M. +16 more
This paper is a phenomenological description of the ionospheric plasma and induced magnetospheric boundary (IMB) response to two different types of upstream solar wind events impacting Mars in March 2008, at the solar minimum. A total of 16 Mars Express orbits corresponding to five consecutive days is evaluated. Solar TErrestrial RElations Observa…
The aurorae of Uranus past equinox
Lamy, L.; Badman, S. V.; Cowley, S. W. H. +9 more
The aurorae of Uranus were recently detected in the far ultraviolet with the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) providing a new, so far unique, means to remotely study the asymmetric Uranian magnetosphere from Earth. We analyze here two new HST Uranus campaigns executed in September 2012 and November 2014 with different temporal coverage and under varia…
How Much Flux Does a Flux Transfer Event Transfer?
Milan, S. E.; Fear, R. C.; Coxon, J. C. +1 more
Flux transfer events are bursts of reconnection at the dayside magnetopause, which give rise to characteristic signatures observed by a range of magnetospheric/ionospheric instrumentation. One outstanding problem is that there is a fundamental mismatch between space-based and ionospheric estimates of the flux that is opened by each flux transfer e…
Constraints on Io's interior from auroral spot oscillations
Saur, Joachim; Roth, Lorenz; Feldman, Paul D. +3 more
The morphology of Io's aurora is dominated by bright spots near the equator that oscillate up and down in approximate correlation with the oscillating orientation of the Jovian magnetospheric field. Analyzing Hubble Space Telescope images, we find that the auroral spots oscillate in phase with the time-variable Jovian magnetic field at Io and that…
Observation of Three-Dimensional Magnetic Reconnection in the Terrestrial Magnetotail
Xu, Xiaojun; Lapenta, Giovanni; Huang, Shiyong +7 more
Study of magnetic reconnection has been focused on two-dimensional geometry in the past decades, whereas three-dimensional structures and dynamics of reconnection X line are poorly understood. In this paper, we report Cluster multispacecraft observations of a three-dimensional magnetic reconnection X line with a weak guide field ( 25% of the upstr…
Enhancement of oxygen in the magnetic island associated with dipolarization fronts
Cao, J. B.; Fu, H. S.; Liu, W. L. +2 more
A significant enhancement of O+ is observed by Cluster inside an earthward propagating magnetic island behind a dipolarization front (DF). Such enhancement, from 0.005 to 0.03 cm-3, makes the O+ flux inside the magnetic island 20 times larger than that outside the magnetic island. In the meantime, the H+…
A new solar wind-driven global dynamic plasmapause model: 2. Model and validation
Gallagher, Dennis L.; He, Fei; Liemohn, Mike W. +5 more
A new solar wind-driven global dynamic plasmapause (NSW-GDP) model has been constructed based on the largest currently available database containing 49,119 plasmapause crossing locations and 3957 plasmapause profiles (corresponding to 48,899 plasmapause locations), from 18 satellites during 1977-2015 covering four solar cycles. This model is compi…
Io plasma torus ion composition: Voyager, Galileo, and Cassini
Steffl, Andrew J.; Bagenal, Fran; Nerney, Edward G.
The Io torus produces ultraviolet emissions diagnostic of plasma conditions. We revisit data sets obtained by the Voyager 1, Galileo, and Cassini missions at Jupiter. With the latest version (8.0) of the CHIANTI atomic database we analyze UV spectra to determine ion composition. We compare ion composition obtained from observations from these thre…
The Warm Plasma Composition in the Inner Magnetosphere During 2012-2015
Spence, H. E.; Skoug, R. M.; Goldstein, J. +4 more
Ionospheric heavy ions play an important role in the dynamics of Earth's magnetosphere. The greater mass and gyroradius of ionospheric oxygen differentiates its behavior from protons at the same energies. Oxygen may have an impact on tail reconnection processes, and it can at least temporarily dominate the energy content of the ring current during…