Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
Fig. 3. Jupiter lightcurves (0.2-2.0 keV, 300 s bins) from the November 2003
XMM-
Newton
observations. CML: System III Central Meridian Longitude.
lightcurve of the North and South auroral spots, but not in the equatorial
region. However, there is an
40% increase in the equatorial flux between
beginning and end of the November observation, which is found to corre-
late with a similar increase in solar X-ray flux. The bottom panel in Fig. 3
shows the System III Central Meridian Longitude (CML). The North spot
is brightest around CML = 180
◦
, similar to the December 2000
Chandra
and the April 2003
XMM-Newton
results.
Remarkably, a large solar X-ray flare which took place on the Sun's
Jupiter-facing side during the
XMM-Newton
observations has been found
to be associated with a corresponding feature in the Jovian equatorial
lightcurve (Fig. 4).
11
This, and the overall increase in the equatorial X-ray
flux during the November observation, suggest that the non-auroral X-ray
output from Jupiter is directly controlled by the Sun.
A search for periodic behavior on short timescales in the auroral soft
X-rays (i.e. the
Chandra
45 min oscillations) has been carried out by gener-
ating amplitude spectra from the lightcurves; Jupiter's 10 h rotation period
is clearly detected in the North and South aurorae (see Fig. 5), but no
evidence is found for short timescale periodicities, as none was found in the
∼
