Ion temperature imaging of the Earth's magnetosphere

Scime, E.E., Zaniewski, A.M., Skoug, R.M., Thomsen, M., Pollock, C.J.  


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
paper, we review the qualitative and quantitative spatially resolved 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 earth's quiet
time 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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IEEE Transactions on Plasma Science, 33 (2), 593-598, 2005