The IMAGE Mission - Global Views of a Geomagnetic Storm

J. L. Green(1), J. L. Burch(2), B. Reinisch(3), W. W. L. Taylor(4), and
    S. F. Fung(1)

1 NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, USA.
2 Southwest Research Institute, San Antonio, TX, USA
3 University of Mass., Lowell, MA, USA
4 Raytheon/Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, USA.

The application of remote sensing techniques has a high potential of obtaining
unprecedented space weather related data on the dynamics of storm and substorm
processes and in particular determining the relationship between a variety of
phenomena. The Imager for Magnetopause-to-Aurora Global Exploration (IMAGE)
mission has an impressive array of remote sensing instruments which are imaging
a number of important phenomena such as the auroral zone, the geocorona, the
ring current, the plasmasphere, and the auroral ion fountain on a time scale of
10 minutes or less. On March 25th, IMAGE was placed into a polar orbit with
apogee of about 7 Earth radii (RE) and inclination of about 45 degrees. At this
location it is well situated to observe the structure and dynamics of a number
of magnetospheric boundaries over periods of several hours during geomagnetic
storms. This paper will provide an overview of some of the early measurements
from the IMAGE instruments illustrating many aspects of global geomagnetic storm
dynamics. 

_______________
Presented at the first S-RAMP Conference, Sapporo, Japan, October 2-6, 2000.