The magnetospheric lobe at geosynchronous orbit

Details The magnetospheric lobe at geosynchronous orbit The magnetospheric lobe at geosynchronous orbit

Sep 1994

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1994jgr....9917283t&link_type=abstract

Journal of Geophysical Research (ISSN 0148-0227), vol. 99, no. A9, p. 17,283-17,293

Physics

11

Current Sheets, Geosynchronous Orbits, Magnetospheric Instability, Solar Planetary Interactions, Electrons, Flux (Rate), Magnetopause, Planetary Magnetic Fields, Solar Wind

Scientific paper

On rare occasions, satellites at geosynchronous altitude enter the magnetospheric lobe, characterized by extremely low ion fluxes between 1 eV and 40 eV and electron fluxes above a few hundred eV. One year of plasma observations from two simultaneously operating spacecraft at synchronous orbit is surveyed for lobe encounters. A total of 34 full encounters and 56 apparent near encounters are identified, corresponding to approximately 0.06% of the total observation time. Unlike energetic particle (E is greater than 40 keV) dropouts studied earlier, there is a strong tendency for the lobe encounters to occur postmidnight, as late as 07 local time. The two spacecraft encounter the lobe with different rates and in different seasons. These occurrence properties are not simply explicable in terms of the orbital geometry in either the solar magnetic or the geocentric solar magnetospheric coordinate system. These occurrence properties are not simply explicable in terms of the orbital geometry in either the solar magnetic or the geocentric solar magnetospheric coordinate system. A composite coordinate system which previously organized more energetic particle dropouts is somewhat more successful in organizing the lobe encounters, suggesting that solar wind distortion of the magnetic equatorial plane away from the dipole location and toward the antisolar direction may be largely responsible for these dropouts. Our results further suggest that this distortion persists even sunward of the dawn-dusk terminator. However, a simple dawn-dusk symmetric distortion does not fully account for all the seasonal and local time asymmetries in the distorted field. The lobe encounters are strongly associated with magnetospheric activity and tend to occur in association with rare magnetosheath encounters at synchronous orbit. It thus appears that the presence of the lobe at geosynchronous orbit is the result of major, probably asymmetric modifications of the magnetospheric field geometry in times of strong disturbance.

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