Mercury's Nightside Magnetosphere: Predictions for Mercury's Magnetotail Twist at the Orbits of MPO and Mio Article Swipe
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· 2025
· Open Access
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· DOI: https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu25-6978
· OA: W4408436952
Planetary magnetospheres exhibit significant twisting of the magnetotail with increasing downstream distances. However, Mercury's tail twist observed by MESSENGER indicate a rather small twist of up to 3 degrees.Here, we model Mercury's magnetotail response to different Interplanetary Magnetic Field (IMF) directions and determine what MPO and Mio might observe in their orbital phase with the hybrid model AIKEF.Our hybrid model results indicate that Mercury's magnetotail topology exhibits a similar small twist at MPO altitudes, comparable to MESSENGER results.The tail twist observed by Mio, however, indicates a strong dependency on the upstream IMF direction, becoming much more Earth-like.In addition, kinetic effects warp and bend the neutral sheet significantly, disallowing easy determinations of the twist angles.
