Home > Research > Publications & Outputs > Auroral beads at Saturn and the driving mechanism

Electronic data

  • accepted_version_radioti_beads

    Rights statement: This is an author-created, un-copyedited version of an article accepted for publication/published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. IOP Publishing Ltd is not responsible for any errors or omissions in this version of the manuscript or any version derived from it. The Version of Record is available online at doi: 10.3847/2041-8213/ab4e20

    Accepted author manuscript, 1.29 MB, PDF document

    Available under license: CC BY-NC: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

Links

Text available via DOI:

View graph of relations

Auroral beads at Saturn and the driving mechanism: Cassini proximal orbits

Research output: Contribution to Journal/MagazineJournal articlepeer-review

Published
  • Aikaterini Radioti
  • Zhonghua Yao
  • Denis Grodent
  • B. Palmaerts
  • E. Roussos
  • Kostas Dialynas
  • Donald G. Mitchell
  • Z.Y. Pu
  • Sarah Badman
  • Jean Claude Gerard
  • W. Pryor
  • B. . Bonfond
Close
Article numberL16
<mark>Journal publication date</mark>30/10/2019
<mark>Journal</mark>Astrophysical Journal Letters
Issue number1
Volume885
Number of pages7
Publication StatusPublished
<mark>Original language</mark>English

Abstract

During the Grand Finale Phase of Cassini, the Ultraviolet Imaging Spectrograph on board the spacecraft detected repeated detached small-scale auroral structures. We describe these structures as auroral beads, a term introduced in the terrestrial aurora. Those on DOY 232 2017 are observed to extend over a large range of local times, i.e., from 20 LT to 11 LT through midnight. We suggest that the auroral beads are related to plasma instabilities in the magnetosphere, which are often known to generate wavy auroral precipitations. Energetic neutral atom enhancements are observed simultaneously with auroral observations, which are indicative of a heated high pressure plasma region. During the same interval we observe conjugate periodic enhancements of energetic electrons, which are consistent with the hypothesis that a drifting interchange structure passed the spacecraft. Our study indicates that auroral bead structures are common phenomena at Earth and giant planets, which probably demonstrates the existence of similar fundamental magnetospheric processes at these planets.

Bibliographic note

This is an author-created, un-copyedited version of an article accepted for publication/published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. IOP Publishing Ltd is not responsible for any errors or omissions in this version of the manuscript or any version derived from it. The Version of Record is available online at doi: 10.3847/2041-8213/ab4e20