Jupiter's Main Auroral Emission

Licia Ray (University of Colorado)

While we are most familiar with the Earth's aurora, the giant planets of the solar system exhibit similar phenomena. Jupiter has three distinct regions of aurora; the Io spot and tail, main oval, and variable polar aurora. The main aurora is caused by an internally driven, steady-state process and is direction connected with the transfer of angular momentum from Jupiter to radially transported Iogenic plasma. I will show that field-aligned potentials are crucial in the transport of angular momentum from Jupiter's atmosphere to its magnetospheric plasma.