MAXIS Balloon Observations of Electron Microburst Precipitation

Details MAXIS Balloon Observations of Electron Microburst Precipitation MAXIS Balloon Observations of Electron Microburst Precipitation

Dec 2003

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2003agufmsm51e..08m&link_type=abstract

American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2003, abstract #SM51E-08

Physics

2716 Energetic Particles, Precipitating, 2730 Magnetosphere: Inner, 2788 Storms And Substorms

Scientific paper

Quantifying and understanding losses is an integral part of understanding relativistic electron variability in the radiation belts. SAMPEX observations indicate that electron microburst precipitation is a major loss mechanism during active periods; the loss of relativistic electrons during a six hour period due to microburst precipitation was recently estimated to be comparable to the total number of trapped electrons in the outer zone (Lorentzen et al., 2001). Microburst precipitation was first observed from a balloon (Anderson and Milton, 1964), but these early measurements were only sensitive to <100 keV. The first balloon-based observations of microbursts sensitive to MeV energies were obtained during the MAXIS 2000 long duration balloon campaign. MAXIS was launched from McMurdo Station in Antarctica carrying a germanium spectrometer, a BGO scintillator and two X-ray imagers designed to measure the bremsstrahlung produced by precipitating electrons. The balloon circumnavigated the south pole in 18 days covering magnetic latitudes ranging from 58o-90o South. During the week following a moderate geomagnetic storm (with Dst reaching -91 nT), MAXIS detected a total of over 16 hours of microburst precipitation. We present high resolution spectra obtained with the MAXIS germanium spectrometer which allow us to determine the precipitating electron energy distribution. The precipitating distribution will then be compared to the trapped distribution measured by the GPS and LANL satellites. We also examine the spatial distribution of the precipitation.

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