Interplanetary Hydrogen Lyman-Alpha Emission Observations from the Mercury Atmospheric and Surface Composition Spectrometer on the MESSENGER Spacecraft

Details Interplanetary Hydrogen Lyman-Alpha Emission Observations from the Mercury Atmospheric and Surface Composition Spectrometer on the MESSENGER Spacecraft Interplanetary Hydrogen Lyman-Alpha Emission Observations from the Mercury Atmospheric and Surface Composition Spectrometer on the MESSENGER Spacecraft

Dec 2010

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2010agufmsh21a1797p&link_type=abstract

American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2010, abstract #SH21A-1797

Physics

[2144] Interplanetary Physics / Interstellar Gas

Scientific paper

Interplanetary hydrogen resonantly scatters solar Lyman-alpha radiation, producing an intense ultraviolet (UV) emission. This hydrogen comes from interstellar space from the "upwind" direction and forms a cavity depleted in slow neutral hydrogen near the Sun due to charge-exchange with solar wind protons and solar extreme ultraviolet photoionization. The Mercury Atmospheric and Surface Composition Spectrometer (MASCS) aboard the MESSENGER spacecraft is now exploring the neutral hydrogen within 0.3 AU of the Sun. MASCS Lyman-alpha observations obtained in 2010 are modulated in brightness with look direction. We are modeling these data with existing interplanetary hydrogen models. These models are especially sensitive to the global distribution of the solar wind proton flux and to variations in the solar Lyman-alpha intensity. Applying existing models to data from MESSENGER and other spacecraft is also a powerful technique for in-flight UV calibration.

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