MIST

Magnetosphere, Ionosphere and Solar-Terrestrial

Latest news

Winners of Rishbeth Prizes 2023

We are pleased to announce that following Spring MIST 2023 the Rishbeth Prizes this year are awarded to Sophie Maguire (University of Birmingham) and Rachel Black (University of Exeter).

Sophie wins the prize for the best MIST student talk which was entitled “Large-scale plasma structures and scintillation in the high-latitude ionosphere”. Rachel wins the best MIST poster prize, for a poster entitled “Investigating different methods of chorus wave identification within the radiation belts”. Congratulations to both Sophie and Rachel!

As prize winners, Sophie and Rachel will be invited to write articles for Astronomy & Geophysics, which we look forward to reading.

MIST Council extends their thanks to the University of Birmingham for hosting the Spring MIST meeting 2023, and to the Royal Astronomical Society for their generous and continued support of the Rishbeth Prizes.

Nominations for MIST Council

We are pleased to open nominations for MIST Council. There are two positions available (detailed below), and elected candidates would join Beatriz Sanchez-Cano, Jasmine Kaur Sandhu, Andy Smith, Maria-Theresia Walach, and Emma Woodfield on Council. The nomination deadline is Friday 26 May.

Council positions open for nomination

  • MIST Councillor - a three year term (2023 - 2026). Everyone is eligible.
  • MIST Student Representative - a one year term (2023 - 2024). Only PhD students are eligible. See below for further details.

About being on MIST Council


If you would like to find out more about being on Council and what it can involve, please feel free to email any of us (email contacts below) with any of your informal enquiries! You can also find out more about MIST activities at mist.ac.uk.

Rosie Hodnett (current MIST Student Representative) has summarised their experience on MIST Council below:
"I have really enjoyed being the PhD representative on the MIST council and would like to encourage other PhD students to nominate themselves for the position. Some of the activities that I have been involved in include leading the organisation of Autumn MIST, leading the online seminar series and I have had the opportunity to chair sessions at conferences. These are examples of what you could expect to take part in whilst being on MIST council, but the council will welcome any other ideas you have. If anyone has any questions, please email me at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..”

How to nominate

If you would like to stand for election or you are nominating someone else (with their agreement!) please email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. by Friday 26 May. If there is a surplus of nominations for a role, then an online vote will be carried out with the community. Please include the following details in the nomination:
  • Name
  • Position (Councillor/Student Rep.)
  • Nomination Statement (150 words max including a bit about the nominee and your reasons for nominating. This will be circulated to the community in the event of a vote.)
 
MIST Council contact details

Rosie Hodnett - This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Mathew Owens - This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Beatriz Sanchez-Cano - This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Jasmine Kaur Sandhu - This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Andy Smith - This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Maria-Theresia Walach - This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Emma Woodfield - This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
MIST Council email - This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

RAS Awards

The Royal Astronomical Society announced their award recipients last week, and MIST Council would like to congratulate all that received an award. In particular, we would like to highlight the following members of the MIST Community, whose work has been recognised:
  • Professor Nick Achilleos (University College London) - Chapman Medal
  • Dr Oliver Allanson (University of Birmingham) - Fowler Award
  • Dr Ravindra Desai (University of Warwick) - Winton Award & RAS Higher Education Award
  • Professor Marina Galand (Imperial College London) - James Dungey Lecture

New MIST Council 2021-

There have been some recent ingoings and outgoings at MIST Council - please see below our current composition!:

  • Oliver Allanson, Exeter (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.), to 2024 -- Chair
  • Beatriz Sánchez-Cano, Leicester (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.), to 2024
  • Mathew Owens, Reading (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.), to 2023
  • Jasmine Sandhu, Northumbria (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.), to 2023 -- Vice-Chair
  • Maria-Theresia Walach, Lancaster (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.), to 2022
  • Sarah Badman, Lancaster (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.), to 2022
    (co-opted in 2021 in lieu of outgoing councillor Greg Hunt)

Charter amendment and MIST Council elections open

Nominations for MIST Council open today and run through to 8 August 2021! Please feel free to put yourself forward for election – the voting will open shortly after the deadline and run through to the end of August. The positions available are:

  • 2 members of MIST Council
  • 1 student representative (pending the amendment below passing)

Please email nominations to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. by 8 August 2021. Thank you!

Charter amendment

We also move to amend the following articles of the MIST Charter as demonstrated below. Bold type indicates additions and struck text indicates deletions. Please respond to the email on the MIST mailing list before 8 August 2021 if you would like to object to the amendment; MIST Charter provides that it will pass if less than 10% of the mailing list opposes its passing. 

4.1  MIST council is the collective term for the officers of MIST and consists of six individuals and one student representative from the MIST community.

5.1 Members of MIST council serve terms of three years, except for the student representative who serves a term of one year.

5.2 Elections will be announced at the Spring MIST meeting and voting must begin within two months of the Spring MIST meeting. Two slots on MIST council will be open in a given normal election year, alongside the student representative.

5.10 Candidates for student representative must not have submitted their PhD thesis at the time that nominations close.

Statistical Planetary Period Oscillation Signatures in Saturn's UV Auroral Intensity

by Alexander Bader, Lancaster University, UK.

Saturn's highly dynamic auroras are generated by electrons precipitating along the magnetic field lines into the planet's polar ionospheres due to currents along the magnetic field lines. Therefore, the aurora provide information about the location and strength of these field-aligned currents. Two types of large-scale current systems have been observed in magnetic field measurements: one a quasi-static system associated with flow shears between plasma rotating at different speeds in the outer magnetosphere. The other significant type are field-aligned current systems rotating according to the planetary period oscillation (PPO) systems. Both the northern and the southern hemisphere are associated with one such system each, superimposed on the quasistatic system and causing roughly 10.7-hour periodic oscillations throughout the Kronian magnetosphere.

Upward and downward field-aligned currents in the northern ionosphere were found to be modulated by rotating patterns imposed by both the northern and southern PPO systems, the latter modulation being facilitated through interhemispheric current closure. The auroral intensity is hence also expected to be modulated accordingly, such that the northern aurora is brightest at roughly ΨN/S = 90°, where the currents have also been shown to maximize. Due to the two PPO systems rotating at slightly different angular velocities, this results in a double modulation.

In this study we analyzed the statistical behavior of Saturn's ultraviolet auroral emissions over the full Cassini mission using all suitable Cassini-UVIS images acquired between 2007 and 2017. This study shows for the first time that both hemispheres' auroral intensities are modulated by both the PPO system associated with the same hemisphere (primary system, Fig. 1a) and the opposite hemisphere (secondary system, Fig. 1b), relatively. The modulation by the primary system is found to be more intense than the one caused by the secondary system. This confirms that both PPO systems' field-aligned currents traverse the entire magnetosphere and close at least partly in the hemisphere opposite to where the generating perturbation is located.

For more information, see our paper below:

Bader, A., Badman, S. V., Kinrade, J., Cowley, S. W. H., Provan, G., & Pryor, W. R. (2018). Statistical planetary period oscillation signatures in Saturn's UV auroral intensity. Journal of Geophysical Research: Space Physics, 123, 8459–8472. https://doi.org/10.1029/2018JA025855

Figure 1: Average northern UV auroral intensity maxima per local time (4/3 h bin size) and PPO phase ΨN/S (20° bin size), shown in a logarithmic color scale. (a) Northern hemisphere auroral intensity ordered by the northern PPO system and (b) northern hemisphere auroral intensity ordered by the southern PPO system. Two Ψ phase cycles are plotted for clarity, the expected locations of maximum upward current are indicated by dashed white lines. On the top and to the side of each 2D histogram the averages of the mean intensity maxima over the ΨN/S and LT dimensions are shown in black, respectively. Separate histograms showing the PPO intensity modulation in the dawn-noon (blue) and dusk-midnight (red) regions are calculated from the parts of the histogram marked with colored boxes and shown to the right side (note the logarithmic intensity scale). The histogram over the full LT range (black) has been fitted with a simple sine (gray). Its maxima are marked with vertical dash-dotted lines, its peak-to-peak (pk-pk) amplitude and the ΨN angle with the highest intensity are given in the top right corner of each panel.