Masaki Nishino

Abstract The density of the solar wind plasma near the Earth’s magnetosphere sometimes decreases to only several per cent of the usual value, and such density extrema result in a significant reduction of the dynamic pressure and Alfvén Mach number ($$M_A$$) of the solar wind flow. While a symmetric expansion of the Earth’s magnetosphere by the low dynamic pressure was assumed in previous studies, a global magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) simulation study predicted a remarkable dawn-dusk asymmetry of the magnetospheric shape under low-density solar wind and Parker-spiral interplanetary magnetic field (IMF) configuration. Here, we present observations consistent with the asymmetric deformation of the magnetosphere under low-$$M_A$$ solar wind and Parker-spiral IMF conditions, focusing on the significant expansion of the dawn-flank magnetosphere detected by the Geotail spacecraft. A global MHD simulation reproduced the dawnward expansion of the near-Earth magnetosphere, which was consistent with the observation by Geotail. The solar wind flow had a non-negligible dusk-to-dawn component and partly affected the dawnward expansion of the magnetosphere. Local, roughly Alfvénic sunward acceleration of magnetosheath ions at the dawn flank magnetopause suggests magnetosheath plasma entry into the magnetosphere through open field lines generated by magnetic reconnection at the dayside magnetopause. At the same time, Cluster 1 and 3, located near the southern polar cusp, also detected continuous antisunward ion jets and occasional sunward jets, which are consistent with the occurrence of magnetic reconnection near the southern cusp. These observations suggest that enhanced plasma acceleration at the dayside magnetopause operates under the low-$$M_A$$ solar wind and Parker spiral IMF conditions and that plasma influx across the dawnside magnetopause is at work under such a low-$$M_A$$ condition. These results can be helpful in understanding interactions between low-$$M_A$$ solar/stellar winds and celestial objects, such as inner planets and exoplanets. Graphic Abstract

The Moon and Mercury are airless bodies, thus they are directly exposed to the ambient plasma (ions and electrons), to photons mostly from the Sun from infrared range all the way to X-rays, and to meteoroid fluxes. Direct exposure to these exogenic sources has important consequences for the formation and evolution of planetary surfaces, including altering their chemical makeup and optical properties, and generating neutral gas exosphere. The formation of a thin atmosphere, more specifically a surface bound exosphere, the relevant physical processes for the particle release, particle loss, and the drivers behind these processes are discussed in this review.

The Moon interacts with the incident solar wind plasma in various ways, and most of these interactions are accompanied by variations of the interplanetary magnetic field (IMF) around the Moon. Here we first report decreases of the IMF strength observed at 100 km altitude on the lunar dayside and over the polar region, comparing upstream solar wind data from ACE with Kaguya (SELENE) data. We note that the magnetic field decreases are observed above non-magnetized regions or very weakly magnetized regions. In one event the IMF is weakened in the dayside northern hemisphere when the IMF is roughly anti-parallel to the solar wind flow. We estimate that the decrease in the magnetic pressure can be partly compensated by the thermal pressure of the back-scattered solar wind protons, which suggests that the magnetic field decrease is interpreted as diamagnetic effect by the back-scattered protons. In another event an IMF decrease is continuously detected from the northern polar region to the dayside mid-latitude region, which is not fully explained by the thermal pressure of the back-scattered protons. We also discuss the diamagnetic current system in the upstream (fore-moon) solar wind region formed by the back-scattered protons.

There forms a tenuous region called the wake behind the Moon in the solar wind, and plasma entry/refilling into the wake is a fundamental problem of the lunar plasma science. High-energy ions and electrons in the foreshock of the Earth's magnetosphere were detected at the lunar surface in the Apollo era, but their effects on the lunar night-side environment have never been studied. Here we show the first observation of bow-shock reflected protons by Kaguya (SELENE) spacecraft in orbit around the Moon, confirming that solar wind plasma reflected at the terrestrial bow shock can easily access the deepest lunar wake when the Moon stays in the foreshock (We name this mechanism type-3 entry'). In a continuous type-3 event, low-energy electron beams from the lunar night-side surface are not obvious even though the spacecraft location is magnetically connected to the lunar surface. On the other hand, in an intermittent type-3 entry event, the kinetic energy of upward-going field-aligned electron beams decreases from similar to 80 eV to similar to 20 eV or electron beams disappear as the bow-shock reflected ions come accompanied by enhanced downward electrons. According to theoretical treatment based on electric current balance at the lunar surface including secondary electron emission by incident electron and ion impact, we deduce that incident ions would be accompanied by a few to several times higher flux of an incident electron flux, which well fits observed downward fluxes. We conclude that impact by the bow-shock reflected ions and electrons raises the electrostatic potential of the lunar night-side surface. (C) 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

For five days of each lunar orbit, the Moon is shielded from solar wind bombardment by the Earths magnetosphere, which is filled with terrestrial ions. Although the possibility of the presence of terrestrial nitrogen and noble gases in lunar soil has been discussed based on their isotopic composition, complicated oxygen isotope fractionation in lunar metal(2,3) (particularly the provenance of a O-16-poor component) remains an enigma(4,5) . Here, we report observations from the Japanese spacecraft Kaguya of significant numbers of 110 keV O+ ions, seen only when the Moon was in the Earths plasma sheet. Considering the penetration depth into metal of O+ ions with such energy, and the O-16-poor mass-independent fractionation of the Earths upper atmosphere 6 , we conclude that biogenic terrestrial oxygen has been transported to the Moon by the Earth wind (at least 2.6 x104 ions cm(-2) s(-1)) and implanted into the surface of the lunar regolith, at around tens of nanometres in depth (3,4) . We suggest the possibility that the Earths atmosphere of billions of years ago may be preserved on the present-day lunar surface.

The Moon possesses a long tail of neutral sodium atoms that are emitted from the lunar surface and transported anti-sunward by the solar radiation pressure. Since the earth crosses the lunar sodium tail for a few days around the new moon, the resonant light emission from sodium atoms can be detected from the ground. Here we show the first long-term (16 years) observation of the lunar sodium tail, using an all-sky imager at Shigaraki Observatory (35 degrees N, 136 degrees E), Japan. We have surveyed our database of all-sky sodium images at a wavelength of 5893 nm to find more than 20 events in which a bright spot emerges around the anti-lunar point during the new moon periods. We could not find any clear correlation between the sodium brightness and solar wind parameters (density, speed, dynamic pressure, and F10.7 index). In particular, no enhancement of the sodium spot brightness is detected even under very high density solar wind conditions (70 cm(-3); an order-of-magnitude higher than usual), which means that solar wind sputtering is not a principal mechanism of the formation of the lunar sodium tail. (C) 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Earth's magnetosphere is an obstacle to the supersonic solar wind and the bow shock is formed in the front side of it. In ordinary hydrodynamics, the flow decelerated at the shock is diverted around the obstacle symmetrically about the Earth-Sun line, which is indeed observed in the magnetosheath most of the time. Here we show a case under a very low-density solar wind in which duskward flow was observed in the dawnside magnetosheath. A Rankine-Hugoniot test shows that the magnetic effect is crucial for this "wrong flow'' to appear. A full three-dimensional magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) simulation of the situation confirming this interpretation and earlier simulations is also performed. It is illustrated that in addition to the "wrong flow'' feature, various peculiar characteristics appear in the global picture of the MHD flow interaction with the obstacle.