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The first coordinated ground- and space-based optical observations of equatorial plasma bubbles
School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA
E.O. Hulburt Center for Space Research, Naval Research Laboratory, Washington, District of Columbia, USA
The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, Maryland, USA
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Illinois, USA
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Illinois, USA
The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, Maryland, USA
We report on ionospheric optical emissions detected by the GUVI instrument on the TIMED satellite. As the satellite crosses the equatorial zone the bright Appleton Anomaly region is imaged. Often these bright zones are interrupted by regions slanted from west to east as the equator is approached forming a backwards ‘C’-shape in the image. To explain this feature we use simultaneous ground-based observations looking equatorward from Hawaii using the 777.4-nm emission. We also compare these optical observations to inverted electron density maps, as well as to those made by radar and to numerical simulations of the Rayleigh-Taylor instability. The characteristic shape is a result of a shear in the eastward plasma flow velocity, which peaks near the F peak at the equator and decreases both above and below that height. The ability to detect these unstable and usually turbulent ionospheric regions from orbit provides a powerful global remote sensing capability for an important space weather process.
Received 11 March 2003; accepted 12 June 2003; published 29 July 2003.
Citation: (2003), The first coordinated ground- and space-based optical observations of equatorial plasma bubbles, Geophys. Res. Lett., 30(14), 1766, doi:10.1029/2003GL017301.
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