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American Geophysical Union, Geophysical Research Letters, 23(43), p. 11,963-11,970, 2016

DOI: 10.1002/2016gl071757

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Dynamics of the flares in the active polar region of Jupiter: QP FLARES IN JUPITER'S AURORAE

Journal article published in 2016 by B. Bonfond ORCID, D. Grodent ORCID, S. V. Badman ORCID, J.-C. Gérard ORCID, A. Radioti
This paper is available in a repository.
This paper is available in a repository.

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Data provided by SHERPA/RoMEO

Abstract

The dusk-side of the polar region of Jupiter's UV aurorae, called the active region, sometimes exhibits quasi-periodic (QP) flares on time-scales of 2-3 minutes. Based on Hubble Space Telescope Far-UV time-tag images, we show for the first time that the northern hemisphere also displays QP-flares. The area covered by these flares can reach up to 2.4 × 108 km2 (i.e. the whole active region), but often only involves an area an order of magnitude smaller. Using a magnetic field mapping model, we deduced that these areas correspond to the dayside outer magnetosphere. In our dataset, quasi-periodic features are only seen on half of the cases and even on a given observation, a region can be quiet for one half and blinking on the other half. Consecutive observations in the two hemispheres show that the brightening can occur in phase. Combined with the size and location of the flares, this behaviour suggests that the QP-flares most likely take place on closed magnetic field lines. ; Peer reviewed