- 1Southwest Research Institute, Department of Space Research, San Antonio, Texas, United States of America (rebert@swri.edu)
- 2Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Texas at San Antonio, San Antonio, Texas, USA
- 3Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab, Laurel, Maryland, USA
- 4School of Physics and Astronomy, College of Science and Engineering, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA
- 5Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, Colorado, USA
- 6Space Research Corporation, Annapolis, Maryland, USA
- 7NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland, USA
- 8Department of Astrophysical Sciences, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey, USA
Jupiter’s ultraviolet (UV) polar auroral emissions are highly variable, both spatially and temporally. Observations over Jupiter’s northern and southern polar aurora during Juno’s prime mission did not reveal electron distributions with sufficient energy flux to produce the range of UV brightnesses (10s to 100s of kilorayleigh; kR) typically observed in that region. One suggestion was that significant electron acceleration was occurring below the altitudes sampled by Juno during that timeframe. Juno’s extended mission has provided an opportunity to test this hypothesis by accessing altitudes below 0.2 jovian radii (1 RJ = 71,492 km) above Jupiter’s northern polar auroral region. We present the characteristic features and energy flux of electron distributions at these low altitudes, primarily between 30 eV to 30 keV. A persistent feature below altitudes of 0.5 Rj is a low-energy cut-off in the electron distributions at a few 100s of eV. The energy flux in this energy range have maximum values of several 10s of mW/m-2, suggesting that contributions from electrons above 30 keV are likely required to account for the UV polar auroral emissions.
How to cite: Ebert, R., Clark, G., Elliott, S., Allegrini, F., Bagenal, F., Bolton, S., Connerney, J., Szalay, J., Valek, P., and Wilson, R.: Characteristic Properties of 30 eV to 30 keV Electrons at Low-Altitude Over Jupiter’s Northern Polar Aurora, EGU General Assembly 2025, Vienna, Austria, 27 Apr–2 May 2025, EGU25-7322, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu25-7322, 2025.
