Motion of the Earth's magnetopause: Estimation from low-energy neutral atom emissions

Physics

Scientific paper

Rate now

  [ 0.00 ] – not rated yet Voters 0   Comments 0

Details

2700 Magnetospheric Physics (6939), 2728 Magnetosheath, 2740 Magnetospheric Configuration And Dynamics, 2794 Instruments And Techniques

Scientific paper

On April 13, 2001 the high pressure solar wind impinged on the Earth and moved the magnetopause inside of geosynchronous orbit. During this interval, the Low Energy Neutral Atom (LENA) imager onboard the Imager for Magnetopause-to-Aurora Global Exploration (IMAGE) spacecraft observed significant amount of ENA flux in the direction of the dayside low-latitude magnetosheath. This ENA flux is primarily a result of enhanced charge exchange between the increased solar wind plasma and the exospheric hydrogen neutral. We have developed a method of deriving the stand-off distance of the dayside magnetopause directly from this ENA emission, which enables subsolar distance of the magnetopause to be monitored continuously for an hour. Location of the magnetopause estimated from ENA measurements is found to be well consistent with the in-situ measurement of the magnetopause crossings by the LANL-01A spacecraft on geosynchronous orbit. We also estimated velocity of the inward/outward motion of the dayside magnetopause. Estimated velocities of the magnetopause are typically in between -50 to 50 km/s during this interval, which are very close to the values derived from the recent multi-spacecraft observations of the magnetopause. Our result also shows that the motion of the boundary can be changing very rapidly and that its speed sometimes reaches the order of 100 km/s in response to the arrival of the interplanetary shock, demonstrating that the dayside magnetopause moves at very high acceleration.

No associations

LandOfFree

Say what you really think

Search LandOfFree.com for scientists and scientific papers. Rate them and share your experience with other people.

Rating

Motion of the Earth's magnetopause: Estimation from low-energy neutral atom emissions does not yet have a rating. At this time, there are no reviews or comments for this scientific paper.

If you have personal experience with Motion of the Earth's magnetopause: Estimation from low-energy neutral atom emissions, we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and Motion of the Earth's magnetopause: Estimation from low-energy neutral atom emissions will most certainly appreciate the feedback.

Rate now

     

Profile ID: LFWR-SCP-O-1415804

  Search
All data on this website is collected from public sources. Our data reflects the most accurate information available at the time of publication.