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New Models of Jupiter's Magnetopause and Bow Shock through the $Juno$ Prime Mission: Probabilistic Location, Shape, and Internally-driven Variation
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New Models of Jupiter's Magnetopause and Bow Shock through the $Juno$ Prime Mission: Probabilistic Location, Shape, and Internally-driven Variation

M. J Rutala, C. M Jackman, C. K Louis, A. R Azari, F Bagenal, S. P Joy, W. S Kurth, T. B Keebler, R. S Giles, R. W Ebert, …
ArXiV.org
Cornell University
02/13/2025
DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2502.09186
url
https://doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.2502.09186View
Preprint (Author's original)This preprint has not been evaluated by subject experts through peer review. Preprints may undergo extensive changes and/or become peer-reviewed journal articles. Open Access

Abstract

The interaction between Jupiter's magnetosphere and the solar wind is not well-constrained: while internal energetic plasma processes are thought to dominate plasma circulation, the solar wind nonetheless exerts significant control over the shape and scale of the whole structure. To better constrain this interaction, we derive new functional forms for Jupiter's magnetopause and bow shock using data from the $Ulysses$, $Galileo$, $Cassini$, and $Juno$ missions and calibrated solar wind estimates from the Multi-Model Ensemble System for the Heliosphere (MMESH). We design an empirical Bayesian model to estimate the locations of the boundaries using a Markov-chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithm, expanding our model to sample all times, not only boundary crossing events. The boundary surfaces which best describe the data are thus estimated without the need for a full, physics-based magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) treatment of the Jovian magnetosphere and the additional assumptions required for such. The new magnetopause model exhibits significant polar flattening and dawn-dusk asymmetry, and includes a narrowing of the magnetotail when compared to previous models. The new bow shock model is largely axisymmetric. Both boundary models describe surfaces which lie closer to Jupiter than previous models, which has important implications for the modern picture of Jupiter's dynamic magnetosphere and the expected science results of current and upcoming Jupiter-bound spacecraft. Applying these models to $Juno$'s trajectory, we estimate that the spacecraft should be expected to spend ${\sim}19\%$ of each orbit in the magnetosheath and ${\sim}4\%$ of each orbit in the solar wind starting from Perijove 64 (PJ64, 21 July 2021).
 Physics - Earth and Planetary Astrophysics Physics - Space Physics

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