MESSENGER Observations of Extreme Magnetic Tail Loading and Unloading during its Third Flyby of Mercury: Substorms?

Details MESSENGER Observations of Extreme Magnetic Tail Loading and Unloading during its Third Flyby of Mercury: Substorms? MESSENGER Observations of Extreme Magnetic Tail Loading and Unloading during its Third Flyby of Mercury: Substorms?

May 2010

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2010eguga..12.6109s&link_type=abstract

EGU General Assembly 2010, held 2-7 May, 2010 in Vienna, Austria, p.6109

Computer Science

Scientific paper

During MESSENGER's third flyby of Mercury on September 29, 2009, a variable interplanetary magnetic field produced a series of several minute enhancements of the tail magnetic field by factors of ~ 2 to 3.5. The magnetic field flaring during these intervals indicates that they result from loading of the tail with magnetic flux transferred from the dayside magnetosphere. The unloading intervals were associated with plasmoids and traveling compression regions which are well known signatures of tail reconnection. The peak tail magnetic flux during the smallest loading events equaled 30% of the magnetic flux emanating from Mercury, and may have reached 100% for the largest event. In this case the dayside magnetic shielding is reduced and solar wind flux impacting the surface may be greatly enhanced. Despite the intensity of these events and their similarity to terrestrial substorm magnetic flux dynamics, no energetic charged particles with energies greater than 36 keV were observed. This absence of energetic particles constitutes a deepening puzzle for the view that the Mercury magnetosphere system is undergoing dynamical processes analogous to those at Earth during substorm events.

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