RESUMEN
After leaving the Sun's corona, the solar wind continues to accelerate and cools, but more slowly than expected for a freely expanding adiabatic gas. Alfvén waves are perturbations of the interplanetary magnetic field that transport energy. We use in situ measurements from the Parker Solar Probe and Solar Orbiter spacecraft to investigate a stream of solar wind as it traverses the inner heliosphere. The observations show heating and acceleration of the plasma between the outer edge of the corona and near the orbit of Venus, along with the presence of large-amplitude Alfvén waves. We calculate that the damping and mechanical work performed by the Alfvén waves are sufficient to power the heating and acceleration of the fast solar wind in the inner heliosphere.
RESUMEN
The ambient solar wind that fills the heliosphere originates from multiple sources in the solar corona and is highly structured. It is often described as high-speed, relatively homogeneous, plasma streams from coronal holes and slow-speed, highly variable, streams whose source regions are under debate. A key goal of ESA/NASA's Solar Orbiter mission is to identify solar wind sources and understand what drives the complexity seen in the heliosphere. By combining magnetic field modelling and spectroscopic techniques with high-resolution observations and measurements, we show that the solar wind variability detected in situ by Solar Orbiter in March 2022 is driven by spatio-temporal changes in the magnetic connectivity to multiple sources in the solar atmosphere. The magnetic field footpoints connected to the spacecraft moved from the boundaries of a coronal hole to one active region (12961) and then across to another region (12957). This is reflected in the in situ measurements, which show the transition from fast to highly Alfvénic then to slow solar wind that is disrupted by the arrival of a coronal mass ejection. Our results describe solar wind variability at 0.5 au but are applicable to near-Earth observatories.
RESUMEN
At Mercury, several processes can release ions and neutrals out of the planet's surface. Here we present enhancements of planetary ions (Na+-group ions) in Mercury's northern magnetospheric cusp during flux transfer event (FTE) "showers." FTE showers are intervals of intense dayside magnetopause reconnection, during which FTEs are observed in quick succession, that is, only separated by a few seconds. This study identifies 1953 FTE shower intervals and 1795 Non-FTE shower intervals. During the shower intervals, this study shows that the FTEs form a solar wind entry layer equatorward of the northern magnetospheric cusp. In this entry layer, solar wind ions are accelerated and move downward (i.e., planetward) toward the cusp, which sputter upward-moving planetary ions with a particle flux of 1 × 1011 m-2 s-1 within 1 min. The precipitation rate is estimated to increase by an order of magnitude during FTE showers, to 2 × 1025 s-1, and the neutral density of the exosphere could vary by >10% in response to this FTE-driven sputtering. Such rapid large-scale variations driven by dayside reconnection may explain the minute-to-minute changes in Mercury's exosphere, especially on the high latitudes, observed by ground-based telescopes on Earth. Our MESSENGER in situ observation of enhanced planetary ions in the entry layer likely corresponds to an escape channel for Mercury's planetary ions. Comprehensive, future multipoint measurements made by BepiColombo will greatly enhance our understanding of the processes contributing to Mercury's dynamic exosphere and magnetosphere.
RESUMEN
Mercury has a global dayside exosphere, with measured densities of 10-2 cm-3 at ~1500 km. Here we report on the inferred enhancement of neutral densities (<102 cm-3) at high altitudes (~5300 km) by the MESSENGER spacecraft. Such high-altitude densities cannot be accounted for by the typical exosphere. This event was observed by the Fast-Imaging Plasma Spectrometer (FIPS), which detected heavy ions of planetary origin that were recently ionized, and "picked up" by the solar wind. We estimate that the neutral density required to produce the observed pickup ion fluxes is similar to typical exospheric densities found at ~700 km altitudes. We suggest that this event was most likely caused by a meteroid impact. Understanding meteoroid impacts is critical to understanding the source processes of the exosphere at Mercury, and the use of plasma spectrometers will be crucial for future observations with the Bepi-Colombo mission.
RESUMEN
We present results from a statistical analysis of Mercury's energetic electron (EE) events as observed by the gamma-ray and neutron spectrometer instrument onboard the MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging (MESSENGER) spacecraft. The main objective of this study is to investigate possible anisotropic behavior of EE events using multiple data sets from MESSENGER instruments. We study the data from the neutron spectrometer (NS) and the gamma-ray spectrometer anticoincidence shield (ACS) because they use the same type of borated plastic scintillator and, hence, they have very similar response functions, and their large surface areas make them more sensitive to low-intensity EE events than MESSENGER's particle instrumentation. The combined analysis of NS and ACS data reveals two different classes of energetic electrons: "Standard" events and "ACS-enhanced" events. Standard events, which comprise over 90% of all events, have signal sizes that are the same in both the ACS and NS. They are likely gyrating particles about Mercury's magnetic field following a 90° pitch angle distribution and are located in well-defined latitude and altitude regions within Mercury's magnetosphere. ACS-enhanced events, which comprise less than 10% of all events, have signal sizes in the ACS that are 10 to 100 times larger than those observed by the NS. They follow a beam-like distribution and are observed both inside and outside Mercury's magnetosphere with a wider range of latitudes and altitudes than Standard events. The difference between the Standard and ACS-enhanced event characteristics suggests distinct underyling acceleration mechanisms.
RESUMEN
The MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging (MESSENGER) mission to Mercury has provided a wealth of new data about energetic particle phenomena. With observations from MESSENGER's Energetic Particle Spectrometer, as well as data arising from energetic electrons recorded by the X-Ray Spectrometer and Gamma-Ray and Neutron Spectrometer (GRNS) instruments, recent work greatly extends our record of the acceleration, transport, and loss of energetic electrons at Mercury. The combined data sets include measurements from a few keV up to several hundred keV in electron kinetic energy and have permitted relatively good spatial and temporal resolution for many events. We focus here on the detailed nature of energetic electron bursts measured by the GRNS system, and we place these events in the context of solar wind and magnetospheric forcing at Mercury. Our examination of data at high temporal resolution (10 ms) during the period March 2013 through October 2014 supports strongly the view that energetic electrons are accelerated in the near-tail region of Mercury's magnetosphere and are subsequently "injected" onto closed magnetic field lines on the planetary nightside. The electrons populate the plasma sheet and drift rapidly eastward toward the dawn and prenoon sectors, at times executing multiple complete drifts around the planet to form "quasi-trapped" populations.