Solar zenith angle‐dependent asymmetries in Venusian bow shock location revealed by Venus Express

Abstract

AbstractIt has been long known that the Venusian bow shock (BS) location is asymmetric from the observations of the long‐lived Pioneer Venus Orbiter mission. The Venus Express (VEX) mission crossed BS near perpendicularly not only in the terminator region but also in the near‐subsolar and tail regions. Taking the advantage of VEX orbit geometry, we examined a large data set of BS crossings observed during the long‐lasting solar minimum between solar cycles 23 and 24 and found that the Venusian BS asymmetries exhibit dependence of solar zenith angle. In the terminator and tail regions, both the magnetic pole‐equator and north‐south asymmetries are observed in Venusian BS location, which is similar to the Pioneer Venus Orbiter (PVO) observation near terminator. However, in the near‐subsolar region, only the magnetic north‐south is observed; i.e., the BS shape is indented inward over magnetic south pole and bulged outward over magnetic north pole. The absence of the magnetic pole‐equator asymmetry in the near‐subsolar region suggests that the magnetic pole‐equator asymmetry is mainly caused by the asymmetric wave propagation rather than the ion pickup process. The evident magnetic north‐south asymmetry in solar minimum, which is not observed by PVO, suggests that even during the low long‐lasting solar minimum, the ion pickup process is very important in Venusian space environment.