Plasmapause and Radiation Belts

  • Credit

    NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio

Earth's Radiation Belts Tremble Under Impact of Solar Storm

Radiation Belts and Plasmapause Fluctuate Under Solar Storm

Under the wave of energetic particles from the Halloween 2003 solar storm events, the Earth's radiation belts underwent significant changes in structure. This visualization is constructed using daily-averaged particle flux data from the SAMPEX satellite installed in a simple dipole model for the Earth's magnetic field. The toroidal structure of the belts corresponds to regions with electron fluxes in excess of 100 electrons/s/cm^2/steradian with energies of 2-6 MeV. The color-scale on the cross section is violet for low flux and white for high flux. The translucent grey arcs represent the fields lines of the Earth's dipole field. The 3-dimensional structure was built from the SAMPEX measurement by propagating the particle flux values along field lines of a simple magnetic dipole.

In this visualization, we see the interaction of the radiation belts (violet/white), the plasmapause (green surface) and magnetopause (grey surface).

The radiation belts remain close to the Earth.

Metadata

  • Sensor

    SAMPEX/PET, IMAGE/EUV

  • Animation ID

    3049

  • Video ID

    None

  • Start Timecode

    00:00:00:00

  • End Timecode

    00:00:00:00

  • Animator

    Tom Bridgman, James W. Williams, Greg Shirah

  • Studio

    SVS

  • Visualization Date

    2004/12/01

  • Scientist

    Daniel Baker (LASP), Shrikanth Kanekal (NOAA), Jerald Goldstein (SwRI)

  • Keywords

    Geomagnetic Field, Radiation Belts, Plasmapause, HDTV

  • DLESE Subject

    Space science

  • Data Date

    2003/10/29 - 2003/10/31

  • Pao ID

    G04-071

  • Animation Type

    Regular