The role of Corotation Enforcement Currents in driving the Behavior of
Jupiter's Ultraviolet Main Emission
- Matthew Rutala,
- John Clarke
Abstract
High-resolution observations made by the Hubble Space Telescope have
developed the modern picture of the Jovian main oval emission as the
signature of field-aligned corotation-enforcement currents which keep
magnetospheric plasma rotating at the same rate as Jupiter's magnetic
field. This model explains the slowly changing behavior and bright
emissions of the main oval and allows the magnetosphere to be studied by
remote observations, as the auroral oval directly reflects processes in
the magnetosphere and properties of the plasma therein. Recent results
from the Juno mission have called these results into question, as the
strong, field-aligned currents required by the corotation-enforcement
current system have not been measured. Where is the
corotation-enforcement current-- which must exist to move magnetospheric
plasma-- a dominant driver of the main oval emission? Where do other
processes drive the main oval aurora instead? We present one of the
widest surveys of Jupiter's main oval auroral features to date by
combining over 180 hours of Hubble Space Telescope observations to
address these questions. This comprehensive survey is the first to
measure the corotation rate, an important tool for distinguishing
auroral drivers, of all individual auroral features. This analysis is
made possible due to the development of automated pipelines to reduce
observations, produce keograms, identify discrete auroral emission
features, and measure the corotation rates of these features, among
other properties. We present the measured properties of emission
features as a function of location along the main oval, in terms of
longitude, local time, auroral local time, and magnetic local time.
These results serve as the foundation for comparison to in-situ
measurements from both the Galileo and Juno missions, which will
ultimately help reveal which magnetospheric conditions are likely
responsible for driving corotating emissions and which are responsible
for sub-corotating emissions, such as the dawn storms.