Magnetospheric Drivers of Auroral Variations at Jupiter
- Zhonghua Yao,
- Bertrand Bonfond,
- Denis Grodent
Abstract
Although mass and energy in Jupiter's magnetosphere mostly come from the
innermost Galilean moon Io's volcanic activity, solar wind perturbations
can play crucial roles in releasing the magnetospheric energy and
powering aurorae in Jupiter's polar regions. The relative importance of
solar wind and internal processes in driving Jupiter's auroras remains
poorly understood. Recently, the contemporaneous measurements from NASA
Juno mission and the Hubble Space Telescope provide an unprecedented
opportunity to determine the magnetospheric drivers of auroral
variations at Jupiter, and key evidence on how solar wind would affect
the auroral brightening. In this presentation, we will discuss several
important advances on several distinctive auroral morphologies at
Jupiter, i.e., auroral dawn storm, the main auroral brightening and
auroral injection processes. We find that magnetic reconnection and
dipolarization play crucial roles in driving these auroras, and the
auroral drivers for the Earth and Jupiter have more in common than ever
expected.