No Strings Attached

IMAGE-LENA Observes Oxygen Atoms in the near-Earth Environment

Abstract:: Electrically charged oxygen atoms (green) are ejected into the magnetosphere due to heating in the ionosphere. The red thermometer displays the intensity of the solar wind (dynamic pressure) measured by the Geotail spacecraft. The yellow thermometer represents the source intensity or hydrogen counts as measured by IMAGE-LENA.

No Strings Attached

Studying Solar Wind and Magnetosphere Interactions

Abstract:: This educational brief describes the structure of Earth's magnetosphere, how it interacts with energetic particles emitted by the sun, and how it protects Earth from the effects of these particles. Short descriptions of NASA missions to study the magnetosphere, solar wind, and other particle emissions are included.

No Strings Attached

Abstract:: ViSBARD (Visual System for Browsing, Analysis, and Retrieval of Data) is a data analysis application that brings together measurements from collections of spacecraft near the Earth or throughout the heliosphere In this visualization created from ViSBARD screenshots, we see the magnetic field as measured from six different satellites. The position of each spacecraft is marked by a small color glyph (ACE = yellow, Cluster = dark blue, Geotail = green, GOES 10 = red, Polar = light blue, Wind = purple). The direction of the arrow signifies the direction of the magnetic field while the color represents the intensity (red being the highest, blue the lowest). The magnetic pole of the Earth is in yellow, and it rotates properly as the animation proceeds. This view of the magnetic storm shows highly disturbed fields at geosynchronous orbit (GOES), many crossings of the magnotail current sheet where the field changes sign and points at the opposite pole of the Earth, close encounters with the Earth (large red fields that are truncated to keep the arrows from becoming huge), and the entry from the back of the picture of Wind and Geotail through the bow shock (wire-frame) and magnetopause (sometimes visible as a transparent surface).

No Strings Attached

Abstract:: The ViSBARD (Visual System for Browsing, Analysis, and Retrieval of Data) analysis package has an option to propagate measurements carried by the solar wind. In this visualization created from ViSBARD screenshots, three spacecraft ahead of the Earths bow shock measure the magnetic field as it is carried by the solar wind towards the Earth. Their positions as projected according to the flow speed are noted with the small glyph (Wind = yellow, Geotail = blue, IMP-8 = green). The spacecraft actually move very little over the time interval shown, but a spatial picture emerges when we use a knowledge of the wind velocity to spread the vectors out according to how they flowed past the point of observation. Arrows on the satellite glyphs indicate the magnitude and direction of the magnetic field while the color also represents the intensity (red being the highest, blue the lowest). As the wind flows, we can rapidly obtain information on the extended geometry of convected structures. The wire-frame at the left is a representation of the Earths bow shock (about 100 Earth radii across in what is shown) that shows where the Suns magnetic field would begin to be affected by that the Earth. (The effect of the interaction is not shown.)