Charge exchange imaging of space plasmas 

Earl Scime and Anna Zaniewski 


Detection of neutral atom emission from hot plasmas has evolved to the point
where it is now possible to image hot plasmas in neutral atom emission. In this
work, we review a variety of successful approaches to space-based neutral atom
imaging and discuss the qualitative and quantitative information that can be
obtained from neutral atom images, e.g., hot ion transport and ion temperatures.
A challenging aspect of neutral atom imaging of the EarthÕs magnetosphere is
that the combination of small neutral fluxes and spacecraft motion necessitates
the development of algorithms capable of summing neutral emission obtained from
different vantage points over many months to obtain statistically significant
images. The image summing algorithm and typical summed images are also presented
in this work.

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Review of Scientific Instruments, 75 (10), October 2004