IMAGE EUV & RPI Derived Distributions of Plasmaspheric Plasma and Plasmaspheric Modeling

Gallagher, D., M. Adrian, J. Green, D. Carpenter, T. Newman, J. Taylor, B. Sandel

	The global modeling of plasmaspheric plasma has remained fairly rudimentary over the
last 30-years, owing to our limited ability to validate model results experimentally.
The realization that voids and filamentary structures form in the distribution of
thermal plasma, over a wide range of scale sizes, has only recently been possible with
global imaging. These new images enable entirely new advances in modeling the near Earth
space environment. Fundamental to using IMAGE EUV and RPI measurements to advance
plasmaspheric theory is the derivation of plasma distributions over time. Tomographic
and genetic algorithm approaches to image inversion and results will be discussed. Also
to be discussed are the directions that these IMAGE observations are leading the
advancement of plasmaspheric physics.

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To be presented at the Magnetospheric Imaging Workshop, 
Yosemite National Park, California, U.S.A., Feb. 5-8, 2002.