Visualization of the Inner Magnetosphere

J. Goldstein
Southwest Research Institute, San Antonio, TX


The inner magnetosphere portion of geospace is the home of the plasmasphere,
ring current, plasma sheet, radiation belts, and  ionosphere. These plasma
populations participate in a complex, coupled, group response to the
ever-changing geomagnetic conditions. The past few years have seen the rise of
routine global imaging of the inner magnetosphere through utilization of
ultraviolet, neutral atom, and radar-based remote sensing techniques realized
for the IMAGE mission. At the same time, we  continue to have excellent multiple
sources of in situ observations (e.g., DMSP, Polar, LANL, Cluster) and
ground-based remote-sensing capabilities (e.g., radar, magnetometer, and TEC).
The remote-sensing data provide a means of tying all the available in situ
observations into a coherent picture of the global coupled response of the inner
magnetosphere, if proper visualization techniques are developed. Visualization
tools to represent plasma flows, electric fields, fluxes, and densities exist,
but they need to be used together in new ways. I will present several
visualization tools that have proved fruitful in the study of the inner
magnetosphere, including overlay of in situ data onto images, extraction of
profiles from images, magnetic mapping of images and/or ground-based
observations, and multi-instrument composite images.

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Presentation, Fall A.G.U. Meeting, San Francisco, CA, 13-17 December 2004