ESA’s BepiColombo spacecraft discovered electrons raining down onto the surface of Mercury during a recent flyby, thus possibly triggering high-energy auroras. Typically, auroras are the result of interactions between the solar wind and an electrically charged upper layer of Earth’s atmosphere.
Since Mercury only has an extremely thin atmosphere, called an exosphere, its auroras are generated by the solar wind interacting directly with the planet’s surface. During this flyby, BepiColombo approached Mercury from the night side of the northern hemisphere and made its closest approach near the morning side of the southern hemisphere.
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For the first time, we have witnessed how electrons are accelerated in Mercury’s magnetosphere and precipitated onto the planet’s surface. While Mercury’s magnetosphere is much smaller than Earth’s and has a different structure and dynamics, we have confirmation that the mechanism that generates aurorae is the same throughout the Solar System,’ said Sae Aizawa, Lead Author from the Institut de Recherche en Astrophysique et Planétologie (IRAP).
