Premium
INTERBALL tail observations of dayside magnetopause oscillations and simultaneous POLAR cusp measurements
Author(s) -
Dempsey D. L.,
Avanov L. A.,
Waite J. H.,
Vaisberg O. L.,
Burch J. L.,
Fuselier S. A.,
Smirnov V. N.,
Skalsky A. A.
Publication year - 1999
Publication title -
geophysical research letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.007
H-Index - 273
eISSN - 1944-8007
pISSN - 0094-8276
DOI - 10.1029/1999gl900132
Subject(s) - magnetopause , magnetosheath , cusp (singularity) , polar , physics , spacecraft , geophysics , magnetosphere , astrophysics , magnetic field , computational physics , astronomy , geometry , mathematics , quantum mechanics
On April 13, 1996, while Russia's Interball Tail spacecraft was travelling through the dayside magnetosheath, NASA's Polar spacecraft traversed the northern cusp. Observed transients seen in the SCA‐1 Interball Tail data are shown to be multiple crossings of the magnetopause. Analysis of the moments data from the SCA‐1 instrument and magnetic field data from the MIF instrument on Interball Tail show quasi‐periodic motion of the magnetopause. Simultaneous observations of changes in the He 2+ /H + density ratio in the cusp by the Polar/TIMAS instrument show variations on the same time scale. We conclude that the variations in cusp data observed by Polar are the result of changes in the reconnection rate at the magnetopause and that these changes are associated with the magnetopause oscillations observed by Interball.