Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astrophysics
Scientific paper
Dec 2006
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2006agufmsm23a0305h&link_type=abstract
American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2006, abstract #SM23A-0305
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astrophysics
2704 Auroral Phenomena (2407), 2716 Energetic Particles: Precipitating, 2784 Solar Wind/Magnetosphere Interactions, 2790 Substorms, 6293 Uranus
Scientific paper
The most remarkable magnetosphere in the solar system was found by Voyager 2 in its encounter with Uranus. As might be expected, the aurora, excited in the Uranian atmosphere by magnetospheric interactions, was found from Voyager Ultraviolet Spectrometer (UVS) observations to be similarly remarkable (Herbert and Sandel, JGR 99:4143, 1994). This aurora was found at the feet of magnetic field lines threading only the tail side of the middle magnetosphere, as though it were excited by connection to a partial ring current, and was apparently co-located with the sources of whistler-mode plasma waves and some types of kilometric radio waves (UKR) also observed by Voyager at Uranus. The existence of additional UVS encounter data that was not utilized in the earlier work, the development of new analysis techniques, and advances in computing power (permitting more ambitious calculations) all justify revisiting the problem for the purpose of deriving new insights into the connection between the auroras and magnetospheric charged-particle populations, dynamics, plasma waves, and radio emissions. The initial result of this foray has been an improved map of Uranian auroral emission that confirms the earlier analysis, and may allow additional constraint of the higher multipoles of the Uranian magnetic field. The fitted auroral model of the UVS observations may also be used to derive an approximate time-variation for the aurora, which will be correlated with observed time-variable solar wind properties, as well as UKR and plasma waves, in order to improve our understanding of this novel magnetosphere. The author gratefully acknowledges support from the NASA Outer Planets Research, Planetary Atmospheres, and Geospace Science programs, and from Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris (CNRS), where part of this work was completed.
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