IOPW Aurora amd Magnetosphere sub-Discipline

                          Update Nov 2014

   The concentration of effort in the past year has been at Saturn,
in no small part owing to the continuing Cassini mission.  However,
the Japanese EXCEED instrument on the HISAKI mission is now in operation,
and returning observations of the Io plasma torus and jovian aurora.

   The status of the discipline was reported at the July 2013
Magnetospheres of the Outer Planets conference, held in Athens
Greece (http://space.academyofathens.gr/mop2013/).  The next MOP 
meeting will be in July 2015 in Atlanta.   

   One recent highlight has been the launch of the Japanese mission
Sprint-A / EXCEED, or Hisaki: 

>http://global.jaxa.jp/projects/sat/sprint_a/index.html  

This small EUV telescope is in orbit about the Earth and returning 
time series data on the EUV emissions from the Io plasma torus, as 
well as a number of other targets.  Launch was in August 2013, and 
the instrument has operated since then.  Initial papers on the Io 
plasma torus and jovian aurora are now in the works (initial auroral 
paper by Kimura et al. submitted to GRL).  

   At Saturn, further coordinated HST and Cassini UVIS and VIMS 
observations are scheduled, and these programs have been very
successful to date.  In the first years of Cassini at Saturn,
there were few UV/IR observations of the aurora, but the number
has been increasing over the years, and is now a common mode
for Cassini:  

>http://www.astronomynow.com/news/n0911/25cassini/

The lead people are Jon Nichols for the HST, Wayne Pryor for UVIS, 
and Tom Stallard for VIMS.  The detection of auroral emission from 
the magnetic footprint of Enceladus at Saturn was a big event a 
couple of years ago.  For the present cycle of HST, unfortunately 
there were no new auroral programs accepted.  People are already
planning proposals for the next round of HST.  

A Few Publications (you can find links to specific papers under the publications menu tab): 

“Open Flux in Saturn’s Magnetosphere”, S.V. Badman, C.M. Jackman, J.D. 
Nichols, J.T. Clarke, J.-C. Gérard, Icarus, 213, 137-145, 
doi:10.1016/j.icarus.2013.12.004 (2013). 

“Dynamic Auroral Storms on Saturn”, J.D. Nichols, et al., Geophys. 
Res. Lett., 41, 3323-3330, doi: 10.1002/2014GL060186 (2014). 

“Isolating Auroral FUV Emission Lines Using Compact, Broadband 
Instrumentation”, P.M. Molyneuxet al., Plan. Sp. Sci., 103, 291-298, 
doi:10.1016/j.pss/2014.08.007 (2014).  

"Saturn's Elusive Nightside Polar Arc", A. Radioti et al., Geophys. 
Res. Lett., 41, 6321-6328, doi:10.1002/2014GL061081 (2014).

"Solar Wind and Internally Driven Dynamics: Influences on Magnetodiscs 
and Auroral Responses", Sp. Sci. Rev., doi:10.1007/s11214-014-0075-1 (2014).