Modeling Far Ultraviolet Auroral Ovals at Ganymede

Abstract: Ganymede, one of Jupiters moons, differs from other moons in the Solar System as it has its own magnetic field. This rare property shapes the morphology on the existing far ultraviolet oxygen auroral ovals on the celestial body in the northern and southern hemisphere created by high energy electrons colliding into the atmosphere.With the help of the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) this phenomenon has been captured and analyzed multiple times during the past 20 years using the on-board Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS). The ultimate goal of this project is recreating the far ultraviolet oxygen auroral emissions on Ganymede as a 3D computer model in MATLAB by using the data recovered from HST.The method used to reach this goal was to implement a model with main characteristics of the auroral ovals, project it onto a plane and then use a Cauchy distribution to filter the model. To compare the model with images from HST, a χ2-value was calculated for every pixel in each image. To further improvethe model the Nelder-Mead Simplex optimization method was applied.The project succeeded in such a way that the final model created views of the locations and the appearance of the bright spots that represent the auroral ovals around Ganymede with an accurate result in relation to the given data.