MIST
Magnetosphere, Ionosphere and Solar-Terrestrial
Statistical Planetary Period Oscillation Signatures in Saturn's UV Auroral Intensity
by Alexander Bader, Lancaster University, UK.
Saturn's highly dynamic auroras are generated by electrons precipitating along the magnetic field lines into the planet's polar ionospheres due to currents along the magnetic field lines. Therefore, the aurora provide information about the location and strength of these field-aligned currents. Two types of large-scale current systems have been observed in magnetic field measurements: one a quasi-static system associated with flow shears between plasma rotating at different speeds in the outer magnetosphere. The other significant type are field-aligned current systems rotating according to the planetary period oscillation (PPO) systems. Both the northern and the southern hemisphere are associated with one such system each, superimposed on the quasistatic system and causing roughly 10.7-hour periodic oscillations throughout the Kronian magnetosphere.
Upward and downward field-aligned currents in the northern ionosphere were found to be modulated by rotating patterns imposed by both the northern and southern PPO systems, the latter modulation being facilitated through interhemispheric current closure. The auroral intensity is hence also expected to be modulated accordingly, such that the northern aurora is brightest at roughly ΨN/S = 90°, where the currents have also been shown to maximize. Due to the two PPO systems rotating at slightly different angular velocities, this results in a double modulation.
In this study we analyzed the statistical behavior of Saturn's ultraviolet auroral emissions over the full Cassini mission using all suitable Cassini-UVIS images acquired between 2007 and 2017. This study shows for the first time that both hemispheres' auroral intensities are modulated by both the PPO system associated with the same hemisphere (primary system, Fig. 1a) and the opposite hemisphere (secondary system, Fig. 1b), relatively. The modulation by the primary system is found to be more intense than the one caused by the secondary system. This confirms that both PPO systems' field-aligned currents traverse the entire magnetosphere and close at least partly in the hemisphere opposite to where the generating perturbation is located.
For more information, see our paper below:
Bader, A., Badman, S. V., Kinrade, J., Cowley, S. W. H., Provan, G., & Pryor, W. R. (2018). Statistical planetary period oscillation signatures in Saturn's UV auroral intensity. Journal of Geophysical Research: Space Physics, 123, 8459–8472. https://doi.org/10.1029/2018JA025855
Figure 1: Average northern UV auroral intensity maxima per local time (4/3 h bin size) and PPO phase ΨN/S (20° bin size), shown in a logarithmic color scale. (a) Northern hemisphere auroral intensity ordered by the northern PPO system and (b) northern hemisphere auroral intensity ordered by the southern PPO system. Two Ψ phase cycles are plotted for clarity, the expected locations of maximum upward current are indicated by dashed white lines. On the top and to the side of each 2D histogram the averages of the mean intensity maxima over the ΨN/S and LT dimensions are shown in black, respectively. Separate histograms showing the PPO intensity modulation in the dawn-noon (blue) and dusk-midnight (red) regions are calculated from the parts of the histogram marked with colored boxes and shown to the right side (note the logarithmic intensity scale). The histogram over the full LT range (black) has been fitted with a simple sine (gray). Its maxima are marked with vertical dash-dotted lines, its peak-to-peak (pk-pk) amplitude and the ΨN angle with the highest intensity are given in the top right corner of each panel.