Imaging geospace electrons using Thomson scattering: A new tool for operational space weather monitoring

Physics

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2740 Magnetospheric Configuration And Dynamics, 2784 Solar Wind/Magnetosphere Interactions, 2794 Instruments And Techniques, 7924 Forecasting (2722), 7954 Magnetic Storms (2788)

Scientific paper

Observing Thomson scattered, visible solar radiation provides a means to directly and globally image the electron distributions in the Earth's ionosphere, plasmasphere, and the magnetosphere. Such observations would provide a revolutionary capability to directly observe for the first time how electron densities in the near-Earth space environment respond to forcing from the solar wind, leading to great improvements to and likely evolution of now data-starved operational space environment forecasting models. Images of Thomson scattered light have been used successfully to observe the solar electron corona and heliospheric structures such as coronal mass ejections (CMEs) and co-rotating interaction regions (CIRs). We investigate the feasibility of adapting this remote sensing technique to directly image the electrons in geospace for the first time. The brightness of Thomson scattered solar radiation from geospace is computed using line of sight electron column densities provided by the SAMI3 model of the ionosphere, coupled to the Lyon-Fedder-Mobarry (LFM) global MHD model of the magnetosphere. While the calculated Thomson scattering brightness from geospace electrons is faint compared to the expected background sources (e.g. zodiacal light, instrumental scattered light) we show that it is feasible, although challenging, to make this measurement. We present our preliminary mission concept and our proposed path toward an operational space environment monitoring system.

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