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Diagram of IMAGE spacecraft Launch of IMAGE spacecraft aboard of Delta 277.. IMAGE was the first spacecraft dedicated to imaging the Earth's magnetosphere. [10] IMAGE was a spacecraft developed by the Medium-class Explorer (MIDEX) program, and it was the first spacecraft dedicated to observing the magnetosphere of the Earth, producing comprehensive global images of plasma in the inner ...
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.
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.
This orbit enables observations of the magnetosphere’s response to varying solar wind conditions from the full range of vantage points over time scales encompassing all space weather phenomena. Furthermore, this orbit allows scientific return 100% of the time from at least a single instrument and up to 83% of the time from all instruments ...
A dynamo is generated by a large iron core that has sunk to a planet's center of mass, has not cooled over the years, an outer core that has not been completely solidified, and circulates around the interior. Before the discovery of its magnetic field in 1974, it was thought that because of Mercury's small size, its core had cooled over the years.
Its orbit is optimized to spend extended periods in locations where reconnection is known to occur: at the dayside magnetopause, the place where the pressure from the solar wind and the planets' magnetic field are equal; and in the magnetotail, which is formed by pressure from the solar wind on a planet's magnetosphere and which can extend ...
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.
The plasma sheet in Saturn's magnetosphere has a bowl-like shape not found in any other known magnetosphere. When Cassini arrived in 2004, there was a winter in the northern hemisphere. The measurements of the magnetic field and plasma density revealed that the plasma sheet was warped and lay to the north of the equatorial plane, looking like a ...