First measurements of supersonic polar wind in the polar magnetosphere

Details First measurements of supersonic polar wind in the polar magnetosphere First measurements of supersonic polar wind in the polar magnetosphere

Jul 1984

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1984georl..11..669n&link_type=abstract

Geophysical Research Letters (ISSN 0094-8276), vol. 11, no. 7, July 1984, p. 669-672. Research supported by National Research Co

Physics

101

Earth Magnetosphere, Flow Characteristics, Polar Caps, Supersonic Flow, Wind Velocity Measurement, Field Aligned Currents, Hydrogen Ions, Mach Number, Mass Spectroscopy

Scientific paper

Measurements from the Retarding Ion Mass Spectrometer on the Dynamics Explorer have, for the first time, revealed a supersonic polar wind along polar cap field lines. The observations reported were obtained on the nightside (22:30 to 23:30 MLT) from 65 to 81 deg invariant latitude and at altitudes near 2 earth radii. Fitting the data using a thin-sheath model gives a range of temperatures of 0.1 to 0.2 eV with corresponding flow velocities of 25 to 16 km/s over the estimated range of spacecraft potential of +3 to +5 V. For these values the Mach number ranged from 5.1 to 2.6 (with a most likely value of 3). Characteristics of the H(+) flow are in general agreement with those predicted by 'classical' polar wind theory, but high variabilty of the He(+)/H(+) ratio was observed.

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