Earth and Planetary Sciences (miscellaneous); Space and Planetary Science; astro-ph.EP; atmospheres
Abstract :
[en] We analyze Hubble Space Telescope observations of Ganymede made with the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph between 1998 and 2017 to generate a brightness map of Ganymede's oxygen emission at 1,356 Å. Our Mercator projected map demonstrates that the brightness along Ganymede's northern and southern auroral ovals strongly varies with longitude. To quantify this variation around Ganymede, we investigate the brightness averaged over 36°-wide longitude corridors centered around the sub-Jovian (0° W), leading (90° W), anti-Jovian (180° W), and trailing (270° W) central longitudes. In the northern hemisphere, the brightness of the auroral oval is 3.7 ± 0.4 times lower in the sub-Jovian and anti-Jovian corridors compared to the trailing and leading corridors. The southern oval is overall brighter than the northern oval, and only 2.5 ± 0.2 times fainter on the sub- and anti-Jovian corridors compared to the trailing and leading corridors. This demonstrates that Ganymede's auroral ovals are strongly structured in auroral crescents on the leading side (plasma downstream side) and on the trailing side (plasma upstream side). We also find that the brightness is not symmetric with respect to the 270° meridian, but shifted by ∼20° towards the Jovian-facing hemisphere. Our map will be useful for subsequent studies to understand the processes that generate the aurora in Ganymede's non-rotationally driven, sub-Alfvénic magnetosphere.
Research Center/Unit :
STAR - Space sciences, Technologies and Astrophysics Research - ULiège
Disciplines :
Space science, astronomy & astrophysics
Author, co-author :
Marzok, Alexander; Institute of Geophysics and Meteorology, University of Cologne, Cologne, Germany
Schlegel, Stehpan ; Institute of Geophysics and Meteorology, University of Cologne, Cologne, Germany
Saur, Joachim ; Institute of Geophysics and Meteorology, University of Cologne, Cologne, Germany
Roth, Lorenz ; School of Electrical Engineering, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden
Grodent, Denis ; Université de Liège - ULiège > Département d'astrophysique, géophysique et océanographie (AGO) > Labo de physique atmosphérique et planétaire (LPAP)
Strobel, Darrell F. ; Department of Earth and Planetary Science, and Department of Physics and Astronomy, The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, United States
Retherford, Kurt D. ; Southwest Research Institute, San Antonio, United States ; University of Texas at San Antonio, San Antonio, United States
Language :
English
Title :
Mapping the Brightness of Ganymede's Ultraviolet Aurora Using Hubble Space Telescope Observations
This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (Grant Agreement No. 884711). Open access funding enabled and organized by Projekt DEAL.
Commentary :
Accepted for Publication in Journal of Geophysical Research (Planets)
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