MIST
Magnetosphere, Ionosphere and Solar-Terrestrial
Latest articles
- 2026 MIST Council Election Results
- Do Solar Energetic Particle events impact lower-atmospheric temperatures on Mars?
- How Can Turbulence Improve Space Weather Forecasts?
- Regression to the mean can explain saturation of geomagnetic storms
- Temporal Variability of Saturn's H2 Dayglow and Northern Aurora Observed by Hisaki and Cassini
Latest news
2026 MIST Council Election Results
It is our pleasure to announce the results of the latest MIST Council Election.
- Samuel Wharton (University of Leicester) is elected for a 3 year term as a MIST Councillor
- Jewel Abbey Relampagos (Lancaster University) is elected for a 1 year term as the MIST Student Representative
In addition, due to concerns from the community regarding the ongoing UKRI/STFC funding situation, MIST Council have also decided to charter Mark Lester (University of Leicester) as an additional councillor to inform and steer the council in matters related to this specific brief, as set out in Article 4.5 of the MIST Charter.
We would like to congratulate everyone on their new roles. The full composition of Council can be found on the MIST website (https://www.mist.ac.uk/community/mist-council). We would like to thank all the candidates for putting themselves forward and everyone who took part in the voting. We received votes from 132 people which represents a turnout of 21.5% of people registered to receive the MIST emailing list.
Finally, MIST Council would like to extend their thanks and gratitude to our outgoing members: Fiona Ball and Georgios Nicolaou. We would also like to say a special thank you to Andy Smith who was co-opted to be on MIST council while Rosie Johnson was on maternity leave, thank you for all of your hard work.
Open Letter Ready For Signatories
Protect MIST Science! Sign the MIST Community Open Letter on the STFC funding cuts!
https://sites.google.com/view/uk-mist-community-open-letter
Statement from MIST Council regarding the STFC Funding Situation
Statement from MIST Council regarding the STFC Funding Situation
MIST Council is deeply concerned by the ongoing STFC funding uncertainty and its impact on our community and beyond.
The current combination of prospective delayed and reduced funding, together with already volatile financial situations at universities across the UK, is placing significant strain on research groups. In some cases, institutions may be unable to support researchers through gaps between projects, increasing precarity across the community and adding significant pressure on early-career researchers.
We are concerned that continued uncertainty risks accelerating a brain drain from the UK, as skilled researchers reconsider their future in a system offering limited stability. The loss of expertise at any career stage would have lasting consequences for UK space science.
What is going on?
For those that are unaware of the situation, it is complex and evolving. We suggest the following sources to get up to speed on the current developments.
https://ras.ac.uk/news-and-press/news/proposed-budget-cuts-catastrophe-uk-astronomy
What are we doing about it?
Behind the scenes, MIST Council is actively engaging with relevant parties to understand the scale of the challenge and to identify constructive ways forward.
- We are seeking seasoned members of the community to join MIST Council on a task force to help develop options and represent the needs of our community. If you would like to be involved, please reach out to us via the MIST Council email (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.) by the end of this week (13th February 2026).
- In addition to the task force, we want to provide an open forum for discussion and collective input among all members of the wider MIST community. We are exploring options and will be in touch as soon as possible with further details.
- We believe in working together in the face of the current challenges and we are collaborating with UKSP and others to strive for a fair and positive outcome for all. We are reaching out to members of the SSAP (Solar System Advisory Panel) to explore the hosting of a community town hall meeting, like the one already being organised by the AAP (Astronomy Advisory Panel), to provide an open forum for discussion and collective input.
What can you do to help?
There are several open letters representing people in various career stages that have been made available to sign. We encourage you to read the relevant letter(s) and to sign them if you support them:
- Fellowship Holders: https://advancedfellows-openletter-stfc.github.io/index.html
- Early Career Researchers: https://ecr-openletter-stfc.github.io/
The Royal Astronomical Society are also urging Fellows to lobby their MPs against the cuts, and have included a template letter that can be used to do so:
https://ras.ac.uk/news-and-press/news/ras-fellows-urged-lobby-against-unprecedented-cuts
MIST Council will continue to advocate for transparency, stability, and funding structures that recognise both the long-term nature of our science and the people who deliver it.
We thank you for your continued support in this period of uncertainty.
Please contact This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. if you have further suggestions.
MIST Council
Announcement of New MIST Council 2025
We are very pleased to announce the following members of the community have been elected to MIST Council:
- Gemma Bower (University of Leicester), MIST Councillor
- Tom Elsden (University of St Andrews), MIST Councillor
- Cameron Patterson (Lancaster University), MIST Councillor
- Fiona Ball (University of Southampton), Student Representative
They will begin their terms in July 2025.
We thank outgoing MIST Council members: Maria Walach, Chiara Lazzeri and Emma Woodfield. Andy Smith will remain on council a little longer as a co-opted member to cover Rosie Johnson's maternity leave.
The current composition of Council can be found on our website (https://www.mist.ac.uk/community/mist-council).
Announcement of New MIST Councillors.
We are very pleased to announce the following members of the community have been elected unopposed to MIST Council:
- Rosie Johnson (Aberystwyth University), MIST Councillor
- Matthew Brown (University of Birmingham), MIST Councillor
- Chiara Lazzeri (MSSL, UCL), Student Representative
Rosie, Matthew, and Chiara will begin their terms in July. This will coincide with Jasmine Kaur Sandhu, Beatriz Sanchez-Cano, and Sophie Maguire outgoing as Councillors.
The current composition of Council can be found on our website, and this will be amended in July to reflect this announcement (https://www.mist.ac.uk/community/mist-council).
Observation of a Fully-formed Forward–Reverse Shock Pair due to the Interaction between Two Coronal Mass Ejections at 0.5 au
By Domenico Trotta (Imperial College London)
The Sun is an active star, responsible for creating a highly dynamic and complex environment, namely the heliosphere. Solar eruptive phenomena are key consequences of such activity, which recently reached the peak of its 11-years cycle, and their study is of paramount importance to understand many unsolved mysteries of how energy is converted in space and astrophysical plasmas [1], as well as to advance our understanding of space weather, for which they are major drivers [2]. Further, novel spacecraft missions, such as Solar Orbiter [3], are opening a novel observational window into such phenomena with revolutionary measurements in the poorly explored inner heliospheric regions close to the Sun.
Solar eruptive phenomena can drive shock waves in the heliosphere (i.e., interplanetary IP shocks), which crucially can be detected in-situ, thus representing the missing link to remote observations of astrophysical systems. Sometimes IP shocks are observed in forward-reverse pairs, propagating away and towards the Sun in the local plasma frame. Forward-reverse shock pairs typically bound compressed plasma regions at solar wind Stream Interaction Regions (SIRs) between slow and fast wind originating from coronal holes [4]. Early observational evidence shows that fully formed forward-reverse shock pairs are very rare in the inner heliosphere, and more commonly observed beyond 1 AU [5]. Conversely, Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs), the largest eruptive events from the Sun, are routinely found driving forward shocks able to accelerate particles to high energies [6]. Further, interaction between multiple CMEs has been shown as a promising pathway for fast energy conversion in the heliosphere, with a complex range of phenomena being observed in such interaction.
In our study, exploiting the in-situ Solar Orbiter instrument payload, we identified a fully formed forward-reverse shock pair at the unusually short heliocentric distance of 0.5 AU. The observation is shown in Figure 1. We found that such shock pair was not originating from a solar wind SIR, but rather from the interaction between a fast CME interacting with a preceding, slow CME, thereby creating a compression region driving the shock pair due its expansion. This enabled us to study IP shocks in highly unusual parameter regimes (for example the forward shock propagating in CME material). Further, in the interaction region between the two CMEs, a large range of interesting phenomena of energy conversion, such as enhanced rate of magnetic reconnection, has been identified.
We then used remote observations from STEREO-A to identify the two CMEs as they were ejected from the Sun, revealing that the first, slow CME was an extremely faint event. Finally, we used well the radially aligned Wind spacecraft to investigate the fate of such interesting structure, and found that it dissipated at 1 AU, where only a weak forward shock is observed, in stark contrast with SIR-driven shock pairs expected to become stronger with heliocentric distances. Thus, we highlighted how without Solar Orbiter at inner heliocentric distance, such structure would not have been possible to observe and investigate, once again underlining how exploiting multiple heliospheric vantage points is invaluable to advance our understanding of both the Sun-Earth system and remote astrophysical environments.
Solar Orbiter direct observation of the forward-reverse shock pair and the interacting CMEs
(full details in the publication).
References:
[1] Rice et al., JGR: Space Physics, 108, 1369 (2003)
[2] Temmer, Liv. Rev. in Sol. Phys., 18, 4 (2021)
[3] Muller et al., A&A, 642, A1 (2020)
[4] Belcher, ApJ, 168, 509 (1971)
[5] Jian et al., Sol. Physics, 239, 337 (2006)
[6] Chen, Liv. Rev. in Sol. Phys., 8, 1 (2011)
See publication for details:
Domenico Trotta et al 2024 ApJL 971 L35
DOI 10.3847/2041-8213/ad68fa