Wednesday, December 15, 2010

NASA IBEX: first images of magnetotail structures

Image courtesy of NASA/IBEX Science Team

This image shows the first-ever view of the magnetospheric plasma sheet in profile, as seen by the Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) from outside the magnetosphere.

It shows the densest portions of the plasma sheet, largely following the modeled magnetic structure.

Invisible to the naked eye, yet massive in structure around the Earth is the magnetosphere, the region of space around the planet that ebbs and flows in response to the million-mile-per-hour flow of charged particles continually blasting from the Sun.

NASA's Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) spacecraft, designed to image the invisible interactions occurring at the edge of the solar system, captured images of magnetospheric structures and a dynamic event occurring in the magnetosphere as the spacecraft observed from near lunar distance.

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