Research Objectives:
The South Pole has advantages for auroral imaging because the continuous darkness over the winter months allows 24 hours optical observations and the ideal magnetic latitude permits the observation of dayside aurora. This group operates two ground-based imagers at Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station and combines their observations with simultaneous global auroral observations by the IMAGE spacecraft to investigate the temporal and spatial details and ionospheric effects of reconnection processes at the magnetopause.
The reconnection (merging) region of the magnetosphere provides the most significant entry point for solar wind plasma. It is now widely accepted that the dayside region contains the foot point of field lines that participate in reconnection processes with the interplanetary field. Although there is quite a body of literature about the auroral footprints of the dayside reconnection region from ground based observations it has not been possible to relate those results to simultaneous global auroral images.
Global observations of proton auroras from the IMAGE spacecraft provided direct images of the foot print of the reconnection region showing that reconnection occurs continuously and that the spatial distribution of the precipitation follows the theoretically predicted behavior as a function of the interplanetary field (IMF). The apogee of the IMAGE spacecraft orbit is slowly drifting south and in the time frame of this grant, IMAGE apogee will be over the southern hemisphere. Thus it will be possible to obtain simultaneous global images of the aurora by IMAGE and of the high latitude dayside region by two ground-based imagers (electron and protons auroras) at South Pole Station.
This project will capitalize on this unique opportunity and use the IMAGE satellite as the “telescope” and the ground-based imagers as the “microscope” for these observations. Understanding the earth's electromagnetic environment is key to predicting space weather and to determining how geoactive magnetic storms are.
