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Auroras on mars: from discovery to new developments

  • Regular Article – Atomic and Molecular Collisions
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Abstract

Auroras are emissions in a planetary atmosphere caused by its interactions with the surrounding plasma environment. They have been observed in most planets and some moons of the solar system. Since their first discovery in 2005, Mars auroras have been studied extensively and is now a rapidly growing area of research. Since Mars lacks an intrinsic global magnetic field, its crustal field is distributed throughout the planet and its interactions with the surrounding plasma environment lead to a number of complex processes resulting in several types of auroras uncommon on Earth. Martian auroras have been classified as diffuse, discrete and proton aurora. With new capability of synoptic observations made possible with the Hope probe, two new types of auroras have been observed. One of them, which occurs on a much larger spatial scale, covering much of the disk, is known as discrete sinuous aurora. The other subcategory is one of proton auroras observed in patches. Further study of these phenomena will provide insights into the interactions between the atmosphere, magnetosphere and the surrounding plasma environment of Mars. We provide a brief review of the work done on the subject in the past 17 years since their discovery, and report new developments based on observations with Hope probe.

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Data Availability Statement

This manuscript has associated data in a data repository. [Authors’ comment: EMM data was obtained from the EMM Science Data Center (https://sdc.emiratesmarsmission.ae) and MAVEN data from NASA’s Planetary Data System (https://pds.nasa.gov), both of which are data repositories available in the public domain.]

Notes

  1. Although, technically, magnetic field lines always close on themselves or on a boundary, some magnetic field lines may be regarded as open or draped if one end is connected to the planet and the other end is smeared by energetic particles that enter the planetary atmosphere.

  2. Since there is no global magnetic field on Mars, our use of the word loosely describes regions of influence of the magnetic field.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the New York University Abu Dhabi (NYUAD) Institute Research Grant G1502 and the ASPIRE Award for Research Excellence (AARE) Grant S1560 by the Advanced Technology Research Council (ATRC). EMM data were obtained from the EMM Science Data Center (SDC) and MAVEN data from the Planetary Data System (PDS). Data analysis was performed on the NYUAD High Performance Computing (HPC) resources. It is a pleasure to contribute this article to the special issue in honor of Professor Kurt Becker.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Space Science, New York University Abu Dhabi, Saadiyat Island, P.O. Box 129188, Abu Dhabi, UAE

    Dimitra Atri, Dattaraj B. Dhuri, Mathilde Simoni & Katepalli R. Sreenivasan

  2. Department of Physics, Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, and Tandon School of Engineering, New York University, 726 Broadway, New York, NY, USA

    Katepalli R. Sreenivasan

Authors
  1. Dimitra Atri
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Contributions

DA conceived the project in consultation with KRS and DBD. DA, DBD and MS worked with spacecraft data. All authors contributed to writing the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Dimitra Atri.

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A Appendix: Observations of discrete auroral events

A Appendix: Observations of discrete auroral events

See Figs. 5, 6 and 7.

Fig. 5
figure 5

Observations of auroras by the EMUS instrument in the 130.4 nm oxygen band (part 1)

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Fig. 6
figure 6

Observations of auroras by the EMUS instrument in the 130.4 nm oxygen band (part 2)

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Fig. 7
figure 7

Observations of auroras by the EMUS instrument in the 130.4 nm oxygen band (part 3)

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Atri, D., Dhuri, D.B., Simoni, M. et al. Auroras on mars: from discovery to new developments. Eur. Phys. J. D 76, 235 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1140/epjd/s10053-022-00566-5

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