Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astronomy
Scientific paper
Sep 2006
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2006dps....38.4108h&link_type=abstract
American Astronomical Society, DPS meeting #38, #41.08; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 38, p.559
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astronomy
Scientific paper
The most remarkable magnetosphere in the solar system was found by Voyager 2 in its encounter with Uranus. As might be expected, the aurora, excited in the Uranian atmosphere by magnetospheric interactions, was found from Voyager Ultraviolet Spectrometer (UVS) observations to be similarly remarkable (Herbert and Sandel, JGR 99:4143, 1994). This aurora was found at the feet of magnetic field lines threading only the tail side of the middle magnetosphere, as though it were excited by connection to a partial ring current, and was apparently co-located with the sources of whistler-mode plasma waves and some types of kilometric radio waves (UKR) also observed by Voyager at Uranus.
The existence of additional UVS encounter data that was not utilized in the earlier work, the development of new analysis techniques, and advances in computing power (permitting more ambitious calculations) all justify revisiting the problem for the purpose of deriving new insights into the connection between the auroras and magnetospheric charged-particle populations, dynamics, plasma waves, and radio emissions.
The initial result of this foray has been an improved map of Uranian auroral emission that confirms the earlier analysis, and may allow additional constraint of the higher multipoles of the Uranian magnetic field. The fitted auroral model of the UVS observations may also be used to derive an approximate time-variation for the aurora, which will be correlated with observed time-variable solar wind properties, as well as UKR and plasma waves, in order to improve our understanding of this novel magnetosphere.
This work has been supported by the NASA Outer Planets Research, Geospace Science, and Planetary Atmospheres Programs.
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