RAS

Cluster

ESA


The magnetospheric cusps revealed: Results from the CLUSTER mission

Friday October 8, 2004, 10:30 - 15:30

Royal Astronomical Society, Burlington House, London


The magnetospheric cusps play a key role in regulating the transfer of solar wind energy to the ionosphere and inner magnetosphere. Results from the multi-spacecraft CLUSTER mission reveal them to be regions of great complexity whose structure is determined by both global magnetospheric dynamics and local small-scale plasma processes. This meeting took stock of what has been learned after three years of the CLUSTER mission.
Programme

10:00: Registration and Coffee

Morning Session (Chairman: Peter Cargill)

10:30: Philippe Escoubet (ESA): Introduction to Cluster in the cusps:

10:55: Benoit Lavraud (LANL): Overall topology of the high-altitude cusp

11:25: Katariina Nykyri (ICL): Magnetic field turbulence in the cusp.

11:40: Malcolm Dunlop (RAL): Dynamics of cusp boundaries

12:10 Robert Fear (MSSL): Flux Transfer Events in the Cusp/Magnetosphere Boundary Layer

12:25: Nanan Balan (Sheffield): Cluster Cusp Crossings During Geomagnetic Storms

12:40: Mike Hapgood (RAL): Cluster orbit evolution and cusp studies

12:50: Lunch break.

Afternoon Session (Chairman: Chris Owen)

13:50: Yulia Bogdanova (MSSL): Structure of the mid-altitude cusp

14:20: Jim Wild (Leicester): Connection between high-altitude and ground-based measurements of the cusp

14:50: Aurélie Marchaudon et al  (MSSL): Ionospheric signatures of plasma injections in the cusp triggered by solar wind pressure pulses

15:05: Peter Cargill  (ICL): Future prospects for cusp studies and group discussion

15:30: Tea

16:00: Joint A&G meeting including overview talk by Benoit Lavraud.

Meeting Report

by
Benoit Lavraud (Los Alamos National Laboratory, USA) and Peter J Cargill (Imperial College, London)

published in Astronomy & Geophysics 46, 1.32-1.35, (February 2005)


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