Tour of the Plasmasphere and Plasmapause
The plasmasphere is a region of ionospheric plasma which co-rotates with the Earth, carried by the magnetic field lines. This plasma tends to be colder (i.e. the ions have lower average energy) than the outer region of the magnetosphere. The plasmapause marks the outer boundary of this region. This visualization is a simple fly-around tour of the plasmapause (green) in a relatively quiescent state. For this visualization, the 3-dimensional structure was constructed from the equatorial profile of the plasmapause (as measured by IMAGE/EUV data) by extending the region along field lines of a simple dipole field.
Fly-around view of the plasmasphere, from the north pole to the south.
A view of the plasmasphere above the north geographic pole.
An oblique view of the plasmasphere.
An equatorial view of the plasmasphere.
Credits
Please give credit for this item to:
NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center
Scientific Visualization Studio
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Animators
- Tom Bridgman (Global Science and Technology, Inc.)
- James W. Williams (Global Science and Technology, Inc.)
- Greg Shirah (NASA/GSFC)
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Scientist
- Jerald Goldstein (SwRI)
Release date
This page was originally published on Wednesday, December 15, 2004.
This page was last updated on Wednesday, May 3, 2023 at 1:56 PM EDT.
Missions
This visualization is related to the following missions:Series
This visualization can be found in the following series:Datasets used in this visualization
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[IMAGE: EUV]
ID: 41
Note: While we identify the data sets used in these visualizations, we do not store any further details, nor the data sets themselves on our site.