Reeves, G. D.,
Co-Authors: M. G. Henderson, R. M. Skoug, H. O. Funsten, M. F. Thomsen, E. Santiago, C. J. Pollock, D. J. McComas, J. B. Blake, J. F. Fennell, H. E. Spence, and E. C. Roelof,
Title: Simultaneous ENA Observations of Ring Current Injection from IMAGE/MENA and POLAR/IPS,
Reference: AGU Fall Meeting, San Francisco, CA, Dec. 15-19, 2000.
Reference Type: Contributed Talk
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Abstract:
The IMAGE Medium Energy Neutral Atom (MENA) instrument and the POLAR Imaging Proton Sensor (IPS) provide highly-complementary views of the magnetosphere. MENA measures magnetospheric neutral atoms in the energy range from approximately 1 to 30 keV with 4 deg x 4 deg angular resolution. IPS measures protons and neutral hydrogen with energies above 20 keV with approximately 11 deg x 20 deg resolution. POLAR/IPS has proven to be a very capable energetic neutral atom imager when POLAR is located on field lines with few or no energetic protons. Since the instruments are quite different they do not give a true stereo ENA view of the magnetosphere such as TWINS will provide, but they do provide the first simultaneous ENA images of the magnetosphere from two separate vantage points. We have examined the two data sets simultaneously for a moderate geomagnetic storm that took place on August 12, 2000 in order to investigate the injection of particles from the plasmasheet into the ring current. We have also used forward-modeling techniques to obtain the trapped magnetospheric ion distributions and use those models to further compare information contained in the two sets of ENA images separately and in combination.
