Twenty-Two Simultaneous Chandra and Hubble Observations of Jupiter’s X-ray and UV Aurorae

Jupiter possesses the most powerful UV and X-ray aurora in the solar system. Previous work has shown that hard X-ray emission (photon energy > 2 keV), which is produced by precipitating electrons, coincides with the UV main auroral emission (Branduardi-Raymont et al. 2008). In contrast, soft X-ray emission (photon energy < 2 keV), which is produced by precipitating ions, coincides with UV aurora flares that occur polewards of the main emission (Elsner et al. 2005). The known connections between these two wavebands are based on a single simultaneous Chandra X-ray Observatory (CXO) observation and Hubble Space Telescope (HST) orbit from 24 February 2003. Recent work (Gladstone et al. in prep and presented at recent MOP and AGU meetings) has shown several further connections. Here, we explore the 22 simultaneous HST and CXO Jupiter aurora observations taken between 2016 and 2019. This presentation will showcase the overlaid X-ray and UV auroral videos from Jupiter’s Northern and Southern poles. By working with a group of school students, through the ORBYTS research in schools programme, we identified intervals of shared UV and X-ray auroral morphology between the observations. We present the examples of shared morphologies that were identified and explore a variety of time cadences to note how the morphology varies with integration time. This exploration is critical for our potentially misleading characterisation of a coherent ‘X-ray hot spot’ (Gladstone et al. 2002; Dunn et al. 2017; Weigt et al. 2020), which seems to be connected to several seemingly different UV auroral morphologies. We also note intervals when bright UV aurorae do not coincide with detections of X-ray emission. Grodent et al. (2018) and Nichols et al. (2019) both independently showed that the UV aurora appears to have 6 favoured ‘families’ of behaviour. For the simultaneous observations, we contrast the X-ray aurora morphology with each of these and explore possible trends between the two families. We close by attempting to interpret what the different shared auroral morphologies may mean for the driving processes responsible for Jupiter’s polar aurorae.