The Magnetotail and Plasmasheet
The Magnetotail and Plasmasheet

The solar wind drags along plasma and magnetic field lines in the outer magnetosphere. This stretches the magnetosphere into a long tail behind the Earth, extending way beyond the Moon and up to several million kilometres long. Sometimes, the magnetotail gets overstretched and suddenly snaps back toward Earth like an elastic band. All the energy used in stretching the tail is suddenly released to catapult particles in the magnetotail to high speeds which in turn generate heat and light, especially in the plasmasheet, ring current and ionosphere. This process is known as the substorm.

Investigators
Instruments
AMPTE ATS-6 GOES
Interball Polar LANL
ISEE 1 and 2 Geotail Prognoz
IMP-6 IMP-8

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