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.

Modeling the Time-Dependent Magnetic Fields That BepiColombo Will Use to Probe Down Into Mercury's Mantle

By Sophia Zomerdijk-Russell (Imperial College London)

The interior structure of a magnetised planet can be determined by using electromagnetic induction processes that results from solar-wind-driven magnetopause variability. To determine a profile of conductivity through depth within a planet, a broad spectrum of inducing fields is needed, as each discrete frequency will probe to a certain depth.

In preparation for the arrival of BepiColombo at Mercury in 2025, we have identified the opportunity to use Helios data to assess how solar wind ram pressure forcing can drive magnetopause variability at Mercury, as Helios took measurements during a similar phase of the Solar Cycle that BepiColombo is expected to see on its arrival. We find that Mercury’s magnetosphere is bombarded by a highly variable and unpredictable solar wind with a broad range of frequency signals and that the inducing field generated in response to the variable solar wind ram pressure is non-uniform across the planet’s surface.

A solar wind ram pressure time series from Helios measurements and the KT17 Hermean magnetospheric field model (Korth et al., 2017) were then used to generate a ram pressure driven inducing field spectra at two points on Mercury’s surface. In power spectra of these example inducing field spectra, frequency signals were found to peak between ~5.510-5 and 1.510-2 Hz. Heyner et al. (2021) determined that signals with these frequencies should penetrate into Mercury’s crust and mantle.

Particular orbital configurations of the BepiColombo mission will have MPO inside Mercury’s magnetosphere and Mio measuring the upstream solar wind, see Figure 1. Therefore, the dual spacecraft nature of the BepiColombo mission will be well suited to investigate Mercury’s magnetosphere’s response to external solar wind variability and allow a conductivity profile through to the mantle to be derived from observations of solar wind driven inducing field spectra with timescales seen in this work.

Figure 1. Schematic showing particular BepiColombo MPO (purple) and Mio (orange) spacecraft orbital configurations that will be useful for utilising electromagnetic sounding techniques at Mercury. An average location of the magnetopause is shown in green. Magnetopause variability inducing field signals on the order of a few minutes to a few hours will be able to penetrate through Mercury’s crust and into the mantle, shown by the blue shaded region.

Original article for further detail:

Zomerdijk-Russell, S., Masters, A., Korth, H., & Heyner, D. (2023). Modeling the time-dependent magnetic fields that BepiColombo will use to probe down into Mercury's mantle. Geophysical Research Letters, 50, e2022GL101607. https://doi.org/10.1029/2022GL101607

References: 

Heyner, D., Auster, H.-U., Fornaçon, K.-H., Carr, C., Richter, I., Mieth, J. Z. D., Kolhey, P., Exner, W., Motschmann, U., Baumjohann, W., Matsuoka, A., Magnes, W., Berghofer, G., Fischer, D., Plaschke, F., Nakamura, R., Narita, Y., Delva, M., Volwerk, M., … Glassmeier, K.-H. (2021). The BepiColombo Planetary Magnetometer MPO-MAG: What Can We Learn from the Hermean Magnetic Field? Space Science Reviews, 217(4), 52. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11214-021-00822-x

Korth, H., Johnson, C. L., Philpott, L., Tsyganenko, N. A., & Anderson, B. J. (2017). A Dynamic Model of Mercury’s Magnetospheric Magnetic Field. Geophysical Research Letters, 44(20), 10,147-10,154. https://doi.org/10.1002/2017GL074699