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  • Jasinski_et_al-2016-Geophysical_Research_Letters

    Rights statement: ©2016. The Authors. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited

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Flux transfer event observation at Saturn's dayside magnetopause by the Cassini spacecraft

Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review

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  • Jamie M. Jasinski
  • James A. Slavin
  • Christopher S. Arridge
  • Gangkai Poh
  • Xianzhe Jia
  • Nick Sergis
  • Geraint H. Jones
  • J. Hunter Waite
  • A. J. Coates
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<mark>Journal publication date</mark>6/07/2016
<mark>Journal</mark>Geophysical Research Letters
Volume43
Number of pages11
Publication StatusPublished
Early online date16/05/16
<mark>Original language</mark>English

Abstract

We present the first observation of a flux rope at Saturn's dayside magnetopause. This is an important result because it shows that the Saturnian magnetopause is conducive to multiple X-line reconnection and flux rope generation. Minimum variance analysis shows that the magnetic signature is consistent with a flux rope. The magnetic observations were well fitted to a constant-α force-free flux rope model. The radius and magnetic flux content of the rope are estimated to be 4600–8300 km and 0.2–0.8 MWb, respectively. Cassini also observed five traveling compression regions (remote signatures of flux ropes), in the adjacent magnetosphere. The magnetic flux content is compared to other estimates of flux opening via reconnection at Saturn.