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Study of Earth's magnetosphere began in 1600, when William Gilbert discovered that the magnetic field on the surface of Earth resembled that of a terrella, a small, magnetized sphere. In the 1940s, Walter M. Elsasser proposed the model of dynamo theory , which attributes Earth's magnetic field to the motion of Earth's iron outer core .
A geomagnetic storm, also known as a magnetic storm, is a temporary disturbance of the Earth's magnetosphere caused by a solar wind shock wave. The disturbance that drives the magnetic storm may be a solar coronal mass ejection (CME) or (much less severely) a corotating interaction region (CIR), a high-speed stream of solar wind originating ...
Schematic of the Birkeland or Field-Aligned Currents and the ionospheric current systems they connect to, Pedersen and Hall currents. [1]A Birkeland current (also known as field-aligned current, FAC) is a set of electrical currents that flow along geomagnetic field lines connecting the Earth's magnetosphere to the Earth's high latitude ionosphere.
The VLF radio waves were previously thought to be generated by turbulence in the radiation belts, but recent work by J.L. Green of the Goddard Space Flight Center [citation needed] compared maps of lightning activity collected by the Microlab 1 spacecraft with data on radio waves in the radiation-belt gap from the IMAGE spacecraft; the results ...
fulfills that condition. Here = is the separatrix [13] separating the low latitude magnetosphere with closed geomagnetic field lines at θ ≥ θ m from the polar magnetosphere with open magnetic fieldlines (having only one footpoint on Earth), and τ the local time. θ m ~ 20° is the polar border of the auroral zone. q, Φ co, and τ co are empirical parameters, to be determined from the ...
Short video featuring commentary by David Sibeck, project scientist for the THEMIS mission, discussing a visualization of reconnection fronts. A substorm , sometimes referred to as a magnetospheric substorm or an auroral substorm , is a brief disturbance in the Earth's magnetosphere that causes energy to be released from the " tail " of the ...
MMS mission overview video Visualization of the spacecraft orbit transition. The MMS mission consists of four spacecraft. Each has a launch mass of 1,360 kg (3,000 lb). [6] In their stowed launch configuration, each are approximately 3.5 by 1.2 m (11.5 by 3.9 ft), and when stacked together they have a total height of 4.9 m (16 ft). [6]
The plasmasphere, or inner magnetosphere, is a region of the Earth's magnetosphere consisting of low-energy (cool) plasma.It is located above the ionosphere.The outer boundary of the plasmasphere is known as the plasmapause, which is defined by an order of magnitude drop in plasma density.