Journal
GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS
Volume 42, Issue 23, Pages 10135-10139Publisher
AMER GEOPHYSICAL UNION
DOI: 10.1002/2015GL067063
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Funding
- National Natural Science Foundation of China [41404137, 41321003, 41131066, 41525016, 41474155]
- National Important Basic Research Project [2011CB811405]
- CAS Key Laboratory of Geospace Environment, University of Science and Technology of China
- NASA [NNX15AH28G, NNX15AJ68G]
- NASA [807721, NNX15AJ68G, 804283, NNX15AH28G] Funding Source: Federal RePORTER
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The Mercury is experiencing significant variations of solar wind forcing along its large eccentric orbit. With 12 Mercury years of data from Mercury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging, we demonstrate that Mercury's distance from the Sun has a great effect on the size of the dayside magnetosphere that is much larger than the temporal variations. The mean solar wind standoff distance was found to be about 0.27 Mercury radii (R-M) closer to the Mercury at perihelion than at aphelion. At perihelion the subsolar magnetopause can be compressed below 1.2 R-M of similar to 2.5% of the time. The relationship between the average magnetopause standoff distance and heliocentric distance suggests that on average the effects of the erosion process appears to counter balance those of induction in Mercury's interior at perihelion. However, at aphelion, where solar wind pressure is lower and Alfvenic Mach number is higher, the effects of induction appear dominant.
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