MIST

Magnetosphere, Ionosphere and Solar-Terrestrial

Latest news

Announcement of New MIST Councillors.

We are very pleased to announce the following members of the community have been elected unopposed to MIST Council:

  • Rosie Johnson (Aberystwyth University), MIST Councillor
  • Matthew Brown (University of Birmingham), MIST Councillor
  • Chiara Lazzeri (MSSL, UCL), Student Representative

Rosie, Matthew, and Chiara will begin their terms in July. This will coincide with Jasmine Kaur Sandhu, Beatriz Sanchez-Cano, and Sophie Maguire outgoing as Councillors.

The current composition of Council can be found on our website, and this will be amended in July to reflect this announcement (https://www.mist.ac.uk/community/mist-council).

Nominations are open for MIST Council

We are very pleased to open nominations for MIST Council. There are three positions available (detailed below), and elected candidates would join Georgios Nicolaou, Andy Smith, Maria-Theresia Walach, and Emma Woodfield on Council. The nomination deadline is Friday 31 May.

Council positions open for nomination

2 x MIST Councillor - a three year term (2024 - 2027). Everyone is eligible.

MIST Student Representative - a one year term (2024 - 2025). Only PhD students are eligible. See below for further details.

About being on MIST Council

If you would like to find out more about being on Council and what it can involve, please feel free to email any of us (email contacts below) with any of your informal enquiries! You can also find out more about MIST activities at mist.ac.uk. Two of our outgoing councillors, Beatriz and Sophie, have summarised their experiences being on MIST Council below.

Beatriz Sanchez-Cano (MIST Councillor):

"Being part of the MIST council for the last 3 years has been a great experience personally and professionally, in which I had the opportunity to know better our community and gain a larger perspective of the matters that are important for the MIST science progress in the UK. During this time, I’ve participated in a number of activities and discussions, such as organising the monthly MIST seminars, Autumn MIST meetings, writing A&G articles, and more importantly, being there to support and advise our colleagues in cases of need together with the wonderful council members. MIST is a vibrant and growing community, and the council is a faithful reflection of it."

Sophie Maguire (MIST Student Representative):

"Being the student representative for MIST council has been an amazing experience. I have been part of organizing conferences, chairing sessions, and writing grant applications based on the feedback MIST has received. From a wider perspective, MIST has helped to grow and support my professional networks which in turn, directly benefits my PhD work as well. I would encourage any PhD student to apply for the role of MIST Student Representative and I would be happy to answer any questions or queries you have about the role."

How to nominate

If you would like to stand for election or you are nominating someone else (with their agreement!) please email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. by Friday 31 May. If there is a surplus of nominations for a role, then an online vote will be carried out with the community. Please include the following details in the nomination:

  1. Name
  2. Position (Councillor/Student Rep.)
  3. Nomination Statement (150 words max including a bit about the nominee and focusing on your reasons for nominating. This will be circulated to the community in the event of a vote.)

MIST Council details

  • Sophie Maguire, University of Birmingham, Earth's ionosphere - This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. 
  • Georgios Nicolaou, MSSL, solar wind plasma - This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. 
  • Beatriz Sanchez-Cano, University of Leicester, Mars plasma - This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
  • Jasmine Kaur Sandhu, University of Leicester, Earth’s inner magnetosphere - This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
  • Andy Smith, Northumbria University, Space Weather - This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. 
  • Maria-Theresia Walach, Lancaster University, Earth’s ionosphere - This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. 
  • Emma Woodfield, British Antarctic Survey, radiation belts - This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. 
  • MIST Council email - This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. 

Winners of Rishbeth Prizes 2023

We are pleased to announce that following Spring MIST 2023 the Rishbeth Prizes this year are awarded to Sophie Maguire (University of Birmingham) and Rachel Black (University of Exeter).

Sophie wins the prize for the best MIST student talk which was entitled “Large-scale plasma structures and scintillation in the high-latitude ionosphere”. Rachel wins the best MIST poster prize, for a poster entitled “Investigating different methods of chorus wave identification within the radiation belts”. Congratulations to both Sophie and Rachel!

As prize winners, Sophie and Rachel will be invited to write articles for Astronomy & Geophysics, which we look forward to reading.

MIST Council extends their thanks to the University of Birmingham for hosting the Spring MIST meeting 2023, and to the Royal Astronomical Society for their generous and continued support of the Rishbeth Prizes.

Nominations for MIST Council

We are pleased to open nominations for MIST Council. There are two positions available (detailed below), and elected candidates would join Beatriz Sanchez-Cano, Jasmine Kaur Sandhu, Andy Smith, Maria-Theresia Walach, and Emma Woodfield on Council. The nomination deadline is Friday 26 May.

Council positions open for nomination

  • MIST Councillor - a three year term (2023 - 2026). Everyone is eligible.
  • MIST Student Representative - a one year term (2023 - 2024). Only PhD students are eligible. See below for further details.

About being on MIST Council


If you would like to find out more about being on Council and what it can involve, please feel free to email any of us (email contacts below) with any of your informal enquiries! You can also find out more about MIST activities at mist.ac.uk.

Rosie Hodnett (current MIST Student Representative) has summarised their experience on MIST Council below:
"I have really enjoyed being the PhD representative on the MIST council and would like to encourage other PhD students to nominate themselves for the position. Some of the activities that I have been involved in include leading the organisation of Autumn MIST, leading the online seminar series and I have had the opportunity to chair sessions at conferences. These are examples of what you could expect to take part in whilst being on MIST council, but the council will welcome any other ideas you have. If anyone has any questions, please email me at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..”

How to nominate

If you would like to stand for election or you are nominating someone else (with their agreement!) please email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. by Friday 26 May. If there is a surplus of nominations for a role, then an online vote will be carried out with the community. Please include the following details in the nomination:
  • Name
  • Position (Councillor/Student Rep.)
  • Nomination Statement (150 words max including a bit about the nominee and your reasons for nominating. This will be circulated to the community in the event of a vote.)
 
MIST Council contact details

Rosie Hodnett - This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Mathew Owens - This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Beatriz Sanchez-Cano - This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Jasmine Kaur Sandhu - This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Andy Smith - This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Maria-Theresia Walach - This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Emma Woodfield - This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
MIST Council email - This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

RAS Awards

The Royal Astronomical Society announced their award recipients last week, and MIST Council would like to congratulate all that received an award. In particular, we would like to highlight the following members of the MIST Community, whose work has been recognised:
  • Professor Nick Achilleos (University College London) - Chapman Medal
  • Dr Oliver Allanson (University of Birmingham) - Fowler Award
  • Dr Ravindra Desai (University of Warwick) - Winton Award & RAS Higher Education Award
  • Professor Marina Galand (Imperial College London) - James Dungey Lecture

From Fuji to the F-region: 3 months in Japan studying thermosphere-ionosphere coupling

by Daniel Billett

Daniel Billett is a third year PhD student at Lancaster University. Daniel's research focuses on the high latitude thermosphere - ionosphere coupling at Earth, and in this blog post Daniel talks about taking part in the JSPS Short Term Fellowship Program.

The JSPS Fellowship Program

This spring, I had the privilege of spending 3 months in Japan as part of the JSPS short term fellowship program. These are open to both post-docs, as well as PhD students, for a period of anywhere between 1 and 12 months. For PhD students, they are similar to the yearly JSPS summer program, but are a bit more flexible in terms of start dates and tenure. Which suits me, as I don’t do too well in the 40°C+ temperatures you see in the Japanese summers!

I am currently in the 3rd year of my PhD Lancaster University. However, when I first heard about JSPS short-term fellowship in a group-wide email from my supervisor, I was just entering my 2nd year. I initially thought I wasn’t eligible, but the only restriction for PhD students is that you must be within two years of completion when you begin research in Japan.

In December 2017 I submitted my application, which included a detailed proposal describing the research I planned to do during the fellowship. For the first year of my PhD, I had mainly been using data from the Super Dual Auroral Radar Network (SuperDARN), and had become very interested in how the ionosphere and thermosphere interacted with each other. Up until then I had been using a statistical model for ionospheric conductivity, but knew that under real circumstances, the huge variability of the aurora would mean that it was often a big underestimation. The extra ionisation could lead to big changes in the coupling mechanism between thermospheric neutrals and the ionospheric plasma, which I wanted to investigate more closely.

It’s up to you which institution in Japan you visit, but I recommend talking to your supervisors about anyone they might know who is a specialist in the area you want to research. For me, it was suggested to contact Professor Keisuke Hosokawa of the University of Electro-Communications (UEC), Tokyo. This was someone who had not only had experience with using SuperDARN data before, but was also heavily involved with numerous projects centred around auroral dynamics. We discussed the proposal outline for a couple of months prior to submission to make sure it was original, exciting and detailed. Unlike NERC or STFC however, JSPS fund research from all areas of science from philosophy to medicine, so it’s also important to not be get too technical.

At the end of March 2018, I found out I was successful. All in all, the application process was a bit old fashioned, as I had to send everything off by mail. This included a big pack of application documents to the JSPS headquarters in London, as well as several signed letters to and from Japan. Luckily however, it looks like it can now all be done online, albeit only in Japanese! But that’s okay, because now you can get your Japanese host to apply on your behalf, lucky them! Applying for a Japanese work visa from the embassy was relatively straightforward in comparison, as there are many agents available if you don’t have the capability to do several trips to London. With all things sorted, I started the project in Japan in February 2019.

Far from home

Tokyo, famed for its seemingly never-ending urban sprawl and jam-packed trains, is home to a number of institutions conducting MIST related research. One of those being UEC, situated in the suburb of Chofu. Tokyo is pretty overwhelming for someone who had never lived in a city bigger than Cardiff before, and to be suddenly thrust into a place with everything imaginable from Peach Coke to Pokémon centres was definitely a culture shock.

Left: It wasn’t as good as I hoped. Right: Giant ceramic Pokémon statue at the Pokémon centre, Toshima.


Left: Downtown Shinjuku. Right: One of the many 8-floor super arcades, featuring fully equipped mech-fighting facilities.

Working with aurora

Working with Professor Keisuke Hosokawa and the rest of the ionospheric research group at UEC was a great experience. I had never handled auroral data before, but found being surrounded by a room full of experts helped. I mainly used an instrument dubbed the “Svalcam”, an all-sky imager located on Svalbard and conveniently in the fields of view of two SuperDARN radars, the EISCAT Svalbard Radar (ESR) and a Scanning Doppler Imager (SCANDI). This meant we had all the information we needed: SuperDARN for what the plasma was doing, SCANDI for the neutrals and the ESR/Svalcam combo for conductivity. As an added bonus, all the instrument field-of-views reside well within the polar cap, giving us the unique ability to observe the dayside ionosphere during the polar night. The only thing left to do is figure out what we were looking for…

Neutrals in the thermosphere behave like a bowl of soup. They get pushed around pretty easily and generally move from hot regions (the dayside) to the cold (nightside). When a spoon is thrown into the works however (ionospheric convection), the motion of the soup becomes strongly dictated by how the spoon is stirred (the ion-drag force). This is where the analogy breaks down however. Neutrals in the thermosphere don't collide very often with the ionospheric plasma, so they take a long time to speed up into the direction the convection spoon is trying to stir them. But then the aurora comes in; like adding a big batch of cornflower (additional ionisation), ion-neutral collisions are enhanced and therefore so is the strength of the ion-neutral coupling. A neutral wind "lag" which was previously thought to be on the order of hours can be minutes during periods of auroral activity.

First panel: Svalcam 630nm intensity keogram showing poleward moving auroral forms. Second panel: Corresponding ESR electron density measurements. Third and fourth panels: Zonal and meridional velocity timeseries’ for both the plasma (red) and neutrals (blue). Billett et al. [in prep]. 

During my JSPS fellowship I identified how the neutral wind lag responded to active aurora using conjunctive observations of auroral emissions from Svalcam, ionospheric electron density from the ESR, ion plasma velocity from SuperDARN, and neutral velocity from SCANDI. An example of these observations are shown above. For this example, we saw poleward moving auroral forms in the Svalcam data and corresponding short lived electron density enhancements in the ESR data. This increased plasma density should translate to more collisions between the plasma and neutrals, shortening the neutral wind time lag. The zonal (east-west) and meridional (north-south) velocities of the plasma measured by SuperDARN (red) and of the neutrals from SCANDI (blue) are also shown. We observed that when the poleward moving auroral features start (~07:30 UT), the neutrals experience a rapid velocity enhancement and match the plasma velocity in both components. Even when the meridional plasma velocity slows later on at around 08:15 UT, the neutrals continue at a high speed like when soup keeps spinning even after you finish stirring. This is because the neutrals have residual inertia, and is a phenomena known as the flywheel effect. Overall, this is what we expected to see, but gives confirmation that this is not only a nightside phenomenon. Poleward moving auroral forms are a well-studied auroral feature, which we have now shown to have a much greater impact beyond the ionosphere.

Shooting off on the Shinkansen

During my trip, I got the chance to see a bit of Japan outside of Tokyo. The incredible efficiency of Japanese trains are a bit of a stereotype, which is probably helped by the fact you can get a Shinkansen bullet train every 10 minutes from Tokyo to Osaka (300+ miles) and only use less than 2.5 hours of your life for the entire journey. If that's not enough, you get a spectacular view of Mt Fuji on the way. Highlights of my travels involved walking down the intense Dotonbori street in Osaka, eating Tebasaki chicken wings in Nagoya and walking the Philosophers path in Kyoto. I also got the opportunity to visit and present a seminar at Nagoya university, one of the Japanese SuperDARN institutions who maintain the radars at Hokkaido. This was also the first time I had seen SuperDARN equipment in person, albeit not attached to an antenna!

Left: Mt Fuji from the Shinkansen. Middle: Dotonbori street, Osaka. Right: A Kyoto local enjoying the Philosophers path.

Transmitter equipment for a set of SuperDARN antennas, currently living in the Nagoya university’s Institute for Space-Earth Enviroment workshop.

Arigato Nippon

Overall, I would wholly recommend a JSPS fellowship to any PhD student or post-doc who is interested in spending time in Japan. The country itself is beautiful, as well as a MIST research powerhouse. There are great opportunities to expand your future collaborations, and potentially extend your research focus to an area slightly different to what you’re used to.

Also for all those interested in the work being conducted within the SuperDARN community, the SuperDARN workshop 2019 is taking place at the base of Mt Fuji in Fujiyoshida!

 

If you have any more questions about Daniel's experience as a JSPS Short Term Fellow, then you can This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Some useful links:

Information on the JSPS Short Term Fellowships can be found here.

Details on SuperDARN Japan are available here, as well as information on the SuperDARN Workshop 2019.