Physics
Scientific paper
May 2008
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2008agusm.u24a..08t&link_type=abstract
American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2007, abstract #U24A-08
Physics
5405 Atmospheres (0343, 1060), 5440 Magnetic Fields And Magnetism, 5443 Magnetospheres (2756), 5470 Surface Materials And Properties, 6235 Mercury
Scientific paper
MESSENGER's 14 January 2008 encounter with Mercury has provided new in situ observations of its small magnetosphere. Recent results from three-dimensional hybrid simulations of Mercury's magnetosphere revealed its basic structure, including a bow shock, magnetopause, well pronounced cusp regions, and a closed ion ring that forms around the planet within the magnetosphere. During the flyby, MESSENGER entered Mercury's magnetospheric region at a nearly perpendicular shock, traversed its magnetosheath, and entered Mercury's magnetotail on its night side just before the closest approach to the planet. Then the satellite continued towards the magnetosheath on the dayside and exited Mercury's magnetospheric region via a quasiparallel shock into Mercury's proton foreshock. In this paper we take advantage of the three-dimensional nature of our kinetic model, and we examine MESSENGER's observations in a global kinetic context. We compare and interpret MESSENGER's observations with the results obtained using the global kinetic model; in particular we focus on the waves observed in the foot region of the inbound quasiperpendicular shock, the wavetrain in the downstream region of the shock, magnetosheath turbulence, possible signatures in MESSENGER's data related to the presence of Mercury's belt of quasitrapped particles, and large-amplitude oscillations in the region of Mercury's quasiparallel shock. The ions in Mercury's belt remain quasi-trapped for several cyclotron periods before they are either absorbed by Mercury's surface or escape from Mercury. We will examine energies of these ions, thought to be above 100 keV. We also examine the possibility of the formation of vortices driven by the Kelvin-Helmholtz instability close to Mercury's magnetopause as well as the location of reconnection points within Mercury's magnetosphere.
Anderson Benjamin J.
Baker Daniel N.
Hellinger Petr
Hercik David
Krimigis Stamatios M.
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