Cleft Ion Fountain Energization Region: SCIFER

The SCIFER rocket was successfully launched from the Andoya Rocket Range on January 25, 1995. All of the UNH science experiments worked very well and a suite of first ever rocket data in the dayside cusp at altitudes over 1000 km was obtained. This work resulted in the following publications and presentations to the scientific community

Solar soft X-rays and solar activity

Peak fluxes of flare-associated 8–12 Å X-ray bursts occur at or near the time of the maximum energy content of the soft X-ray source volume. The amplitudes of flare-associated bursts may thus be used as a measure of the energy deposited in the source volume by non-thermal electrons and other processes. In the mean, the soft X-ray burst amplitude is apparently independent of the occurrence of a type III event. This is interpreted to indicate that electrons accelerated by the type III process do not directly participate in establishing the soft X-ray source volume.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/43724/1/11207_2004_Article_BF00153386.pd

The coherence scale length of band-limited Pc3 pulsations in the ionosphere

Band-limited Pc-3 pulsations were observed on one day with pulsation magnetometers, photometers and in VLF activity at South Pole and simultaneously, electric field pulsations were observed in the ionospheric cusp using the PACE HF-Radar located at Halley Station, Antarctica. The electric field pulsations were observed by the radar on open magnetic field lines, which were likely to be connected more directly to the source region (upstream of the foreshock) of the activity than the magnetic pulsations, which were observed on closed magnetic field lines. The electric field pulsations were found to have a coherence scale length of around 30-60 km, significantly less than the upper limit that can be determined from magnetometer measurements

The temporal evolution of electron distributions and associated wave activity following substorm injections in the inner magnetosphere

The temporal evolution of electron distributions and associated wave activity following substorm injections in the inner magnetosphere are investigated using data from the CRRES satellite. Equatorial electron distributions and concomitant wave spectra outside the plasmapause on the nightside of the Earth are studied as a function of time since injection determined from the auroral-electrojet index (AE). The electron cyclotron harmonic (ECH) wave amplitudes are shown to be very sensitive to small modeling errors in the location of the magnetic equator. They are best understood at the ECH equator, defined by the local, maximum in the ECH wave activity in the vicinity of the nominal magnetic equator, suggesting that the ECH equator is a better measure of the location of the true equator. Strong ECH and whistler mode wave amplitudes are associated with the injected distributions and at the ECH equator, in the region 6.0 less than or equal to L < 7.0, exponential fits reveal wave amplitude decay time constants of 6.3+/-1.2 and 4.6+/-0.7 hours, respectively. Pancake electron distributions are seen to develop from injected distributions that are nearly isotropic in velocity space and, in this region, are seen to form on a similar timescale of approximately 4 hours suggesting that both wave types are involved in their production. The timescale for pancake production and wave decay is comparable with the average time interval between substorm events so that the wave-particle interactions are almost continually present in this region leading to a continual supply of electrons to power the diffuse aurora. In the region 3.8 less than or equal to L < 6.0 the timescale for wave decay at the ECH equator is 2.3 +/- 0.6 and 1.1 +/- 0.2 hours for ECH waves and whistler mode waves respectively, although the pancakes in this region show no clear evolution as a function of time

Pc 1 waves and associated unstable distributions of magnetospheric protons observed during a solar wind pressure pulse

We present observations of Pc 1 waves (∼0.6 Hz) that occurred shortly after a strong (\u3e20 nPa) compression of Earth\u27s magnetosphere at 1321 UT, 18 March 2002. Intense Pc 1 waves were observed at several high-latitude ground stations in Antarctica and Greenland from 1321 UT to beyond 1445 UT. Two wave bursts were recorded at the Polar satellite at 1338 and 1343–1344 UT as it passed outbound in the Southern Hemisphere at 1154 local time (SM magnetic latitude of −22° and near L = 7.5) in good magnetic conjunction with the Antarctic. The pressure increase created a significant population of protons between a few hundred eV and several keV, whose fluxes were mostly perpendicular to B. These protons seem to have replaced the quiescent stream of protons (presumably convected from the plasma sheet) that existed before this increase. There was also a nearly two-order-of-magnitude increase in the population of thermal/suprathermal (0.32–410 eV) protons. The generation of ion cyclotron waves is expected to limit the proton temperature anisotropy A, defined as T⊥/T∥ − 1. The ion cyclotron instability driven by the observed hot ion temperature anisotropy is studied using two models, with and without the presence of cold background plasma. Peaks in the calculated instability as a function of time show excellent agreement with the times of the Polar wave bursts, which were measured a few tens of seconds after maxima in the instability calculation. The time delay is consistent with the propagation time to the spacecraft from a source nearer to the equatorial plane. The hot proton population at Polar appears to be driven back to stability by a sudden increase in very field-aligned protons having energies less than the hot perpendicular population, suggesting a different source for the two populations. These observations confirm the importance of both the energization and/or increase in population of protons transverse to B in the several keV range (possibly betatron acceleration as a result of the pressure pulse), and the presence of greatly increased fluxes of lower energy protons (100s of eV to a few keV), predominantly aligned along B, in determining whether the particle population is unstable at a given time

High-latitude ion transport and energetic explorer (HI-LITE): a mission to investigate ion outflow from the high-latitude ionosphere

audience: researcher, professionalThe proposed HI-LITE Explorer will investigate the global ion outflow from the high-latitude ionosphere, its relationship to auroral features, and the consequences of this outflow on magnetospheric processes. The unique nature of the HI-LITE Explorer images will allow temporal and spatial features of the global ion outflow to be determined. The mission's scientific motivation comes from the fundamental role high-latitude ionospheric ions play in the dynamics of the solar wind driven magnetospheric-ionospheric system. These outflows are a major source of plasma for the magnetosphere and it is believed they play an important role in the triggering of substorms. In addition this paper describes the HI-LITE spacecraft and instruments