Location: 3853 Slichter Hall

Presented By:
Nick Schneider - CU LASP

Abstract:

Mars’ lack of a global magnetic field led to low expectations for auroral phenomena on the planet, but MAVEN and Emirates Mars Mission observations have unexpectedly shown auroral activity to quite diverse in nature, dynamically varying and often global in scope. The image below shows three fundamentally different types of aurora on Mars. Ironically, Mars’ lack of a global field is actually responsible for most of the activity, which leads to a new perspective for non-magnetized objects in our solar system and beyond. Each of the three types of aurora is a tracer of a different important process involving the interaction between solar influences and the near-Mars magnetic and charged particle environment. The seminar will describe observations by MAVEN’s Imaging UltraViolet Spectrograph (IUVS) and the Emirates Mars UltraViolet Spectrometer (EMUS) and highlight the new insights they offer.