Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astronomy
Scientific paper
Oct 2007
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2007dps....39.0408s&link_type=abstract
American Astronomical Society, DPS meeting #39, #4.08; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 39, p.415
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astronomy
Scientific paper
Due to its complexity, the production mechanism of Jupiter's powerful aurora is to date not very well understood. Possible correlation with the solar wind has been one of such unsolved problems (Prange et al. 1993; Baron et al., 1996; Gurnet et al., 2002). We analyzed several sets of ground-based infrared data of Jupiter's H3+ aurora, acquired at NASA/IRTF atop Mauna Kea, Hawaii during 1998-2000 seasons. Night-to-night variations of total auroral flux are measured in images and are compared with the solar wind parameters at Jupiter's orbit.
The solar wind parameters used in this study have been numerically inferred using a MHD tomography based on the interplanetary scintillation (IPS) observations (Hayashi et al., 2003).This method reconstructs the global structure of corotating solar wind assuming that such structure exists steadily during one Carrington rotation. Because of this assumption, transient changes of the solar wind can not be reproduced. As Jupiter's H3+ aurora is believed to reflect "time-averaged" magnetospheric activities, the solar wind parameters with 1-day time resolution is still a useful index.
We evaluated the solar-wind dynamic pressure P and the reconnection voltage φ (Nichols et al., 2006) for the period of auroral observations. These two quantities are then converted to possible changes of magnetic flux density in Jupiter's magnetosphere. Neither of these two can explain the auroral flux vatiations solely. However, it is found that combining these two quantities (with slight adjustments) could better explain the increases/decreases of auroral flux. Amplitudes of the auroral flux variations, as well as uncertainties due to "extrapolation" of solar wind parameters to Jupiter's orbit will be discussed.
Connerney J. E.
Hayashi Kumiko
Morioka Akira
Satoh Takehiko
Tokumaru Munetoshi
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