Discovery of Diffuse Aurora on Mars

The Imaging Ultraviolet Spectrograph (IUVS, McClintock et al., 2014) onboard the MAVEN spacecraft has discovered diffuse aurora in Mars’ northern hemisphere spanning a wide range of geographic latitudes and longitudes (Figure 1). This widespread aurora differs from the small auroral patches discovered by the SPICAM instrument onboard the Mars Express spacecraft (Bertaux et al., 2005; Leblanc et al., 2008; Gerard et al., submitted; Soret et al., submitted) restricted to regions of crustal magnetic fields in the southern hemisphere. Furthermore, the northern diffuse aurora appears to peak at altitudes below 100 km, while the crustal field aurora peaked around 120 km.