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TY - JOUR AU - Stallard, Tom S. AU - Burrell, Angeline G. AU - Melin, Henrik AU - Fletcher, Leigh N. AU - Miller, Steve AU - Moore, Luke AU - O’Donoghue, James AU - Connerney, John E. P. AU - Satoh, Takehiko AU - Johnson, Rosie E. PY - 2018 DA - 2018/10/01 TI - Identification of Jupiter’s magnetic equator through H3+ ionospheric emission JO - Nature Astronomy SP - 773 EP - 777 VL - 2 IS - 10 AB - Our understanding of Jupiter’s magnetic field has been developed through a combination of spacecraft measurements at distances >1.8RJ and images of the aurora1–7. These models all agree on the strength and direction of the Jovian dipole magnetic moments, but because higher-order magnetic moments decay more strongly with distance from the planet, past spacecraft measurements could not easily resolve them. In the past 2 years, the Juno mission has measured very close to the planet (>1.05RJ), observing a strongly enhanced localized magnetic field in some orbits8,9, and resulting in models that identify strong hemispheric asymmetries at mid-to-high latitudes10,11. These features could be better resolved by identifying changes in the ionospheric density caused by interactions with the magnetic field, but past observations have been unable to spatially resolve such features12–14. In this study, we identify a dark sinusoidal ribbon of weakened H3+ emission near the jovigraphic equator, which we show to be an ionospheric signature of Jupiter’s magnetic equator. We also observe complex structures in Jupiter’s mid-latitude ionosphere, including one dark spot that is coincident with a localized enhancement in Jupiter’s radial magnetic field observed recently by Juno10. These features reveal evidence of complex localized interactions between Jupiter’s ionosphere and its magnetic field. Our results provide ground-truth for Juno spacecraft observations and future ionospheric and magnetic field models. SN - 2397-3366 UR - https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-018-0523-z DO - 10.1038/s41550-018-0523-z ID - Stallard2018 ER -