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Welcome to Geospace - the comet-like region of Space around the Earth.
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The Earth is the small dot near the centre of the picture. So, as you can see,
geospace is big - it's more than a million kilometres long! This is where
satellites orbit, beaming TV pictures, telephone calls and other information into
our homes and offices. Geospace is where the atmospheres of the Sun and Earth meet. It is not empty space. It contains particles and a magnetic field which come from both the Sun and the Earth. There aren't many particles - if you brought them all down to the ground then they'd fit inside a typical supermarket! But what they lack in number they make up for in energy. Particles are blown along together at up to 500 kilometres per second! Some particles even zip around geospace at speeds close to the speed of light! The behaviour and structure of the particles and magnetic fields vary across geospace. So, geospace is divided up into the smaller regions indicated.
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 Click on the picture to explore the Geospace Environment in more detail. |
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