Mercury's magnetosphere-solar wind interaction under northward and southward interplanetary magnetic field during the MESSENGER flybys

Details Mercury's magnetosphere-solar wind interaction under northward and southward interplanetary magnetic field during the MESSENGER flybys Mercury's magnetosphere-solar wind interaction under northward and southward interplanetary magnetic field during the MESSENGER flybys

Dec 2009

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2009agufm.p21a1204t&link_type=abstract

American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2009, abstract #P21A-1204

Physics

[5443] Planetary Sciences: Solid Surface Planets / Magnetospheres, [6235] Planetary Sciences: Solar System Objects / Mercury

Scientific paper

Analysis of global hybrid simulations of Mercury's magnetosphere--solar wind interaction under northward and southward interplanetary magnetic field (IMF) orientations provides a context for evaluating observations during MESSENGER's first two encounters with Mercury. The global kinetic simulations reveal the basic structure of this interaction, including a bow shock, ion foreshock, magnetosheath, cusp regions, magnetopause, and a closed ion ring belt formed around the planet within the magnetosphere. The two different IMF orientations induce different locations of ion foreshock and different magnetospheric properties: the dayside magnetosphere is smaller and cusps are at lower latitudes for southward IMF than for northward IMF, whereas for southward IMF the nightside magnetosphere is larger and exhibits a thin current sheet with signatures of magnetic reconnection and plasmoid formation. For the two IMF orientations the ion foreshock and quasi-parallel magnetosheath manifest ion-beam-driven large-amplitude oscillations, whereas the quasi-perpendicular magnetosheath shows ion-temperature-anisotropy-driven wave activity. The ions in Mercury's belt remain quasi-trapped for a limited time before they are either absorbed by Mercury's surface or escape from the magnetosphere.

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