Fig. 2: MESSENGER observations during dayside magnetosphere crossing with potential off-equatorial ring current on Jan 8th, 2015.
From: Observational evidence of ring current in the magnetosphere of Mercury
a Energy spectrum of the protons. b Corresponding pitch angle distribution, with uncovered pitch angle bins noted by grey grids. c Components of the magnetic field (red, green, and blue solid lines represent the \({B}_{x},{B}_{y}\ {{{{{\rm{and}}}}}}\ {B}_{z}\) components, respectively) and strength (solid black line). d, e the trajectory of MESSENGER in XZ, XY planes. The thick shaded areas in a–c indicate the time periods during which FIPS observed trapped energetic protons. The corresponding spacecraft locations during these intervals are plotted in d–e as bold grey lines, and the green and blue curves show the modelled dayside bow shock and magnetopause that is obtained from the statistical distribution of observed crossing points12, respectively. The white and black half-circles represent the dayside and nightside hemisphere of Mercury, respectively. See Supplementary Fig. 8 for the colour alternative version of this figure.
