Variability of the Jovian aurorae: focus on a selection of recent results

The aurorae at Jupiter can be separated into four main components: the satellite footprints, the outer emissions, the main emissions and the polar emissions. Each of these components displays some form of variability in location, brightness and/or shape. The nature and the timescale of these changes is particularly revealing of the processes at play.

The footprints of Io and Ganymede are often made of several spots. The distance between these spots and their brightness essentially varies as the planetary magnetic dipole rotates relative to the moons and as the plasma torus or plasma sheet wobble across the satellite orbital plane. However, the spots brightness can also considerably vary on a timescale of minutes as well as from one year to another.

The outer emissions are made of diffuse, patchy or arc-shaped emissions. Two different sources have been proposed to explain these features: injections of hot plasma from the outer magnetosphere and the pitch angle scattering boundary. These features usually last for a few Jovian rotations, but their occurrence rate appears to be related to the global dynamics of the inner magnetosphere on timescales of months.

The main emissions sometimes appear as a complete oval, but they usually have a more chaotic appearance, with broken arcs, gaps and forks. Their brightness and morphology respond to changes in the solar wind characteristics. Nevertheless, the dawn portion of the main emissions sometimes displays spectacular brightening apparently unrelated to the solar wind: the dawn storms. Moreover, on timescales of several months, the statistical location of the main emissions also evolves as the material input from Io increases or decreases.
Globally speaking, the polar emissions also respond to the solar wind input. However, the term “polar emissions” encompasses many different auroral features obviously driven from different mechanisms. Spots and arcs, located just inside the main emissions on the dawn and night side and lasting for a few tens of minutes, have been seen to re-occur every 2 to 3 days. They have thus been associated with night-side reconnection related to the Vasyliũnas cycle. On the other hand, the dusk-side of the polar region is the locus of quasi-periodic UV flares on timescales of 2 to 3 minutes, while periodicities of 20 to 45 minutes have been identified for their X-ray counterpart.
The central part of the polar region is very dynamic, with patches of emissions constantly appearing, moving and disappearing within minutes. However, along with these patches, elongated auroral arcs dubbed “polar auroral filaments” may remain present for several consecutive days.

As we will see in this review talk, the current data set of UV images from the Hubble Space Telescope, including the brand new time-tag sequences from the latest 2012-2013 campaign, gives access to a wide range of auroral phenomena that only begin to reveal their secrets.