Magnetosphere particle populations

The Earth's magnetic field forms a region in space called the magnetosphere, shown here by yellow lines.The magnetosphere gets deformed by a constant wind that blows from the Sun so that it is squashed up on the side facing the Sun, and dragged out on the side facing away from the Sun. The magnetosphere is not an empty region but instead contains high energy charged particles! These particles group together in different regions, trapped by the magnetic field. The Cluster satellites are flying through these regions with trapped particles, studying what they are, how the change over time and how they effect us here on Earth.

The region shown in blue indicates what is known as the plasmasphere; a very cold (58,000C!) and dense region of charged particles.

The region in green shows the location of the plasma sheet. A warm and less dense charged particle region.

The yellow region indicates the region known as the ring current and the orange region the radiation belts in which many of our satellites orbit.


CREDIT: UCL-MSSL/Chris Arridge

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Science & Technology

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