Auroral emissions of the giant planets

Abstract

Auroras are (generally) high-latitude atmospheric emissions that result from the precipitation of energetic charged particles from a planet's magnetosphere. Auroral emissions from the giant planets have been observed from ground-based observatories, Earth-orbiting satellites (e.g., International Ultraviolet Explorer (IUE), Hubble Space Telescope (HST), and Röentgensatellit (ROSAT)), flyby spacecraft (e.g., Voyager 1 and 2), and orbiting spacecraft platforms (e.g., Galileo) at X-ray, ultraviolet (UV), visible, infrared (IR), and radio wavelengths. UV, visible, and IR auroras are atmospheric emissions, produced or initiated when ambient atmospheric species are excited through collisions with the precipitating particles, while radio and X-ray auroras are beam emissions, produced by the precipitating species themselves. The emissions at different wavelengths provide unique and complementary information, accessible to remote sensing, about the key physical processes operating in the atmospheric and magnetospheric regions where they originate. This paper reviews the development of our current understanding of auroral emissions from Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, as revealed through multispectral observations and supplemented by plasma measurements.