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A rendering of the magnetic field lines of the magnetosphere of the Earth. In astronomy and planetary science, a magnetosphere is a region of space surrounding an astronomical object in which charged particles are affected by that object's magnetic field. [1] [2] It is created by a celestial body with an active interior dynamo.
The magnetosphere is defined by the extent of Earth's magnetic field in space or geospace. It extends above the ionosphere , several tens of thousands of kilometres into space , protecting Earth from the charged particles of the solar wind and cosmic rays that would otherwise strip away the upper atmosphere, including the ozone layer that ...
(This simple definition assumes a noon-midnight plane of symmetry, but closed fields lacking such symmetry also must have cusps, by the fixed point theorem.) The amount of solar wind energy and plasma entering the actual magnetosphere depends on how far it departs from such a "closed" configuration, i.e. the extent to which Interplanetary ...
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.
The magnetosphere contains charged particles that are trapped from the stellar wind, which then move along these field lines. As the star rotates, the magnetosphere rotates with it, dragging along the charged particles. [13] As stars emit matter with a stellar wind from the photosphere, the magnetosphere creates a torque on the ejected matter.
Natural plasmoid produced in the near-Earth magnetotail by magnetic reconnection. A plasmoid is a coherent structure of plasma and magnetic fields.Plasmoids have been proposed to explain natural phenomena such as ball lightning, [1] [2] magnetic bubbles in the magnetosphere, [3] and objects in cometary tails, [4] in the solar wind, [5] [6] solar atmosphere, [7] and in the heliospheric current ...
A 1988 J.E.P. Connerney and N.F. Ness review of the Mariner magnetic data noted eight different papers in which were offered no less than fifteen different mathematical models of the magnetic field derived from spherical harmonic analysis of the two close Mariner 10 flybys, with reported centered magnetic dipole moments ranging from 136 to 350 ...
The solar wind moving through the magnetosphere alters the movements of charged particles in the Earth's thermosphere or exosphere, and the resulting ionization of these particles causes them to emit light of varying color, thus forming auroras near the polar regions.