Sounding rocket observations of particle data in the cusp

Details Sounding rocket observations of particle data in the cusp Sounding rocket observations of particle data in the cusp

Dec 2008

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2008agufmsm51b1634m&link_type=abstract

American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2008, abstract #SM51B-1634

Computer Science

Sound

2407 Auroral Ionosphere (2704), 2481 Topside Ionosphere, 2706 Cusp, 2736 Magnetosphere/Ionosphere Interactions (2431), 7855 Spacecraft Sheaths, Wakes, Charging

Scientific paper

The winter 2008 Scifer-2 sounding rocket campaign studied ionospheric outflow in the cusp region. The rocket was launched on January 18, 2008 at 0730 UT from the Andoya Rocket Range in Norway, reaching an apogee of 1468 km over the Eiscat Svalbard Radar. The Scifer 2 campaign was designed as a joint case study, involving both ground and in situ observations, of the low altitude signatures of ionospheric outflow. In situ observations show a thermal ion population with temperatures around 0.6 - 0.8 eV, while ESR observes the temperature at lower altitudes to be ~0.2 eV. This difference is a result of calculating the average over all in situ look directions, which would artificially raise the temperature. In addition to the thermal ion population, there are several bursts of a hotter population of ions with temperatures ranging between 12 -20 eV, along with concurrent elevated wave activity. These hotter ions appear to have been accelerated to energies of several hundred eV, and show interesting velocity dispersion signatures with repeated bands at increasing energies. These two populations are not observed simultaneously, but rather are localized in different regions bordering one another. Additionally, the pitch angle distributions for each of these populations are different. Similar signatures have been seen by other nightside low altitude sounding rockets where upgoing low energy ions are seen adjacent to and coincident with higher energy ion precipitation. Neither observed ion population has a clear local relationship to the variations in the ambient electron temperature, which is a tracer for soft precipitation. We will continue to explore these populations and their boundaries as a case study of structuring in particle signatures in the cusp.

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