Estimating Soft X‐Ray Emission From Uranus's Magnetosheath

Naylor, D. and Ray, L. C. and Dunn, W. R. and Jasinski, J. M. and Paty, C. (2025) Estimating Soft X‐Ray Emission From Uranus's Magnetosheath. Journal of Geophysical Research: Space Physics, 130 (11): e2025JA034. ISSN 2169-9402

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Abstract

Plain Language Summary: Soft X‐rays are detected at different environments within the solar system. One example is a planetary magnetosheath. This is the region outside the magnetosphere containing slowed, heated solar wind, the continuous stream of plasma ejected from the Sun. Here, highly charged solar wind ions and neutral particles from the magnetosphere undergo charge exchange which results in soft X‐ray emission. At Uranus, the exosphere and icy moons Miranda, Ariel, Umbriel, Titania and Oberon provide neutral particles. This model builds a simplified description of Uranus's complex magnetosphere to investigate the rates at which soft X‐rays are emitted from the magnetosheath and the time it may take a soft X‐ray imager (SXI) onboard an approaching spacecraft to image them. Integration times as low as 150 s are obtained when simulating a SMILE‐like SXI on approach, but this can be further improved to be around 3 s by considering a future SXI with a larger field‐of‐view and effective area than SMILE. Finally, when considering the approach of an SXI to Uranus, X‐rays can be imaged within a planetary rotation from distances as far as 10 au. Overall, this work supports further investigation of X‐ray emission from the Uranian system.