Dayside magnetopause reconnection and flux transfer events under radial interplanetary magnetic field (IMF): BepiColombo Earth-flyby observations

Sun, Weijie; Slavin, James A.; Nakamura, Rumi; Heyner, Daniel; Trattner, Karlheinz J.; Mieth, Johannes Z. D.; Zhao, Jiutong; Zong, Qiu-Gang; Aizawa, Sae; Andre, Nicolas; Saito, Yoshifumi

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/angeo-40-217-2022

Articles | Volume 40, issue 2

https://doi.org/10.5194/angeo-40-217-2022

© Author(s) 2022. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/angeo-40-217-2022

© Author(s) 2022. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 40, issue 2

Regular paper

|

22 Apr 2022

Regular paper |

| 22 Apr 2022

Dayside magnetopause reconnection and flux transfer events under radial interplanetary magnetic field (IMF): BepiColombo Earth-flyby observations

Weijie Sun, James A. Slavin, Rumi Nakamura, Daniel Heyner, Karlheinz J. Trattner, Johannes Z. D. Mieth, Jiutong Zhao, Qiu-Gang Zong, Sae Aizawa, Nicolas Andre, and Yoshifumi Saito

Supplement

https://doi.org/10.5194/angeo-40-217-2022-supplement

Data sets

Solar wind spatial scales in and comparisons of hourly Wind and ACE plasma and magnetic field data J. H. King and N. E. Papitashvili https://doi.org/10.1029/2004ja010649

Short summary

This paper presents observations of FTE-type flux ropes on the dayside during BepiColombo's Earth flyby. FTE-type flux ropes are a well-known feature of magnetic reconnection on the magnetopause, and they can be used to constrain the location of reconnection X-lines. Our study suggests that the magnetopause X-line passed BepiColombo from the north as it traversed the magnetopause. Moreover, our results also strongly support coalescence creating larger flux ropes by combining smaller ones.