Listed are all scientific papers resulting from an ISSI activity written or co-authored by ISSI Team members, Working Group members, Workshop participants, visitors or staff members.
An International Space Science Institute (ISSI) workshop was convened to assess recent rapid advances in studies of magnetic reconnection made possible by the NASA Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) mission and to place them in context with concurrent advances in solar physics by the Parker Solar Probe, astrophysics, planetary science and laboratory plasma physics.
Solar photospheric abundances and CI-chondrite compositions are reviewed and updated to obtain representative solar system abundances of the elements and their isotopes. The new photospheric abundances obtained here lead to higher solar metallicity. Full 3D NLTE photospheric analyses are only available for 11 elements. A quality index for analyses is introduced. For several elements, uncertainties remain large.
In 2024 May, the scientific community observed intense solar eruptions that resulted in a great geomagnetic storm and auroral extensions, highlighting the need to document and quantify these events. This study mainly focuses on their quantification. The source active region (AR; NOAA Active Region 13664) evolved from 113 to 2761 millionths of the solar hemisphere between May 4 and 14. NOAA AR 13664’s magnetic free energy surpassed 1033 erg on May 7, triggering 12 X-class flares on May 8–15.
The European Space Agency’s Rosetta mission is the only space mission that has performed long-term monitoring of a comet at close distances. For over two years, Rosetta rendezvoused with comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko, which revealed diverse evolutionary processes of the cometary nucleus. One of the most striking events is the migration of a ∼30 m boulder in the southern hemisphere region of Khonsu.
Using Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN Magnetometer observations, we report the first statistical study of ultralow frequency (ULF) waves at the Martian foreshock. The analyzed foreshock ULF wave events are observed in the 0.008–0.086 Hz frequency range, with nearly circular and elliptical left-handed polarization in the spacecraft reference frame. These waves are propagated quasi-parallel to the ambient magnetic field, with a moderate wave amplitude.
This short article highlights unsolved problems of magnetic reconnection in collisionless plasma. Advanced in-situ plasma measurements and simulations have enabled scientists to gain a novel understanding of magnetic reconnection. Nevertheless, outstanding questions remain concerning the complex dynamics and structures in the diffusion region, cross-scale and regional couplings, the onset of magnetic reconnection, and the details of particle energization.
The interactions of our heliosphere with the surrounding local interstellar medium (LISM) lead to a range of observable phenomena such as energetic neutral atoms (ENAs) from the boundary regions of the heliosphere and the influx of interstellar neutrals (ISNs) into the inner solar system. Hydrogen is the dominant neutral species in the LISM, but due to ionization and radiation pressure, only a fraction of the ISN H atoms reach the inner solar system close to Earth.
We report the detection of water vapor associated with main-belt comet 358P/PANSTARRS on UT 2024 January 8–9 using the NIRSPEC instrument on board JWST. We derive a water production rate of QH2O=(5.0±0.2)×1025 molecules s−1, marking only the second direct detection of sublimation products of any kind from a main-belt comet, after 238P/Read. Similar to 238P, we find a remarkable absence of hypervolatile species, finding QCO2<7.6×1022 molecules s−1, corresponding to QCO2/QH2O<0.2 %.
We present the PANORAMIC survey, a pure parallel extragalactic imaging program with JWST/NIRCam observed during Cycle 1. The survey obtained ∼530 square arcmin of NIRCam imaging from 1–5 μm, totaling ∼192 hr of science integration time. This represents the largest on-sky time investment of any Cycle 1 GO extragalactic NIRCam imaging program by nearly a factor of 2.
A recent study of the distribution of dwarf galaxies in the MATLAS sample in galaxy groups revealed an excess of flattened satellite structures, reminiscent of the co-rotating planes of dwarf galaxies discovered in the local Universe. If confirmed, this lends credence to the plane-of-satellite problem and further challenges the standard model of hierarchical structure formation.
