Wednesday, May 7, 2025 from 11:00am to 12:00pm in ES&T L1118.
Coronal mass ejections (CMEs) are the primary drivers of adverse space weather at Earth. Their interactions with large-scale solar wind structures can significantly alter their properties during propagation, increasing their complexity and making space weather forecasting more challenging. To improve predictions at Earth, it is crucial to study CMEs near the Sun, in their early evolutionary phases, and track their progression through the heliosphere. So, what does this have in common with space weather at Mercury? The answer lies in a unique dataset from the MESSENGER mission. I will discuss how we have used MESSENGER data, along with observations from other spacecraft, to investigate both CME evolution and Mercury’s magnetosphere. In extreme cases, CMEs observed by MESSENGER have compressed Mercury’s dayside magnetosphere to the planet’s surface, which is an event that, to date, has not been observed in situ at any other planet. This finding also has implications for close-in exoplanetary systems. Overall, the high frequency of CME encounters during MESSENGER’s four-year mission has enabled both individual case studies and statistical analyses of space weather effects on Mercury, as well as extensive research on CME evolution. I will summarize these findings and provide an outlook on current and future research using datasets from Parker Solar Probe and Solar Orbiter, along with upcoming mission opportunities.
*Refreshments: 10:30 AM – 11:00 AM (ES&T L1118)
View the event here.