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GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS, VOL. 33, L03101, doi:10.1029/2005GL025020, 2006

Neutral atom emission in the direction of the high-latitude magnetopause for northward IMF: Simultaneous observations from IMAGE spacecraft and SuperDARN radar

S. Taguchi

Department of Information and Communication Engineering, University of Electro-Communications, Tokyo, Japan


K. Hosokawa

Department of Information and Communication Engineering, University of Electro-Communications, Tokyo, Japan


A. Nakao

Department of Information and Communication Engineering, University of Electro-Communications, Tokyo, Japan


M. R. Collier

NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland, USA


T. E. Moore

NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland, USA


A. Yamazaki

Graduate School of Science, Tohoku University, Sendai, Japan


N. Sato

National Institute of Polar Research, Tokyo, Japan


A. S. Yukimatu

National Institute of Polar Research, Tokyo, Japan


Abstract

During a northward interplanetary magnetic field on 27 March 2001, the Low Energy Neutral Atom (LENA) imager on the Imager for Magnetopause-to-Aurora Global Exploration (IMAGE) spacecraft in the magnetosphere observed an enhanced emission in the direction of the very high-latitude magnetopause. Simultaneous observations from IMAGE/LENA and SuperDARN radar show that the LENA emission appears concurrently with the enhancement of the sunward flow of the reverse convection in the ionosphere. The field line mapping from the magnetosphere to the ionosphere suggests that the source ions for the LENA emission are in the sunward flow region. Although the direction of the emission is relatively stable, its direction changes slightly so that the emission may shift poleward or equatorward. From these observations, we suggest that LENA can monitor the ion entry caused by cusp reconnection and that the reconnection site moves on a timescale of several minutes.

Received 21 October 2005; accepted 21 December 2005; published 2 February 2006.

Index Terms: 2706 Magnetospheric Physics: Cusp; 2723 Magnetospheric Physics: Magnetic reconnection (7526, 7835); 2724 Magnetospheric Physics: Magnetopause and boundary layers; 2784 Magnetospheric Physics: Solar wind/magnetosphere interactions; 2463 Ionosphere: Plasma convection (2760).

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Citation: Taguchi, S., K. Hosokawa, A. Nakao, M. R. Collier, T. E. Moore, A. Yamazaki, N. Sato, and A. S. Yukimatu (2006), Neutral atom emission in the direction of the high-latitude magnetopause for northward IMF: Simultaneous observations from IMAGE spacecraft and SuperDARN radar, Geophys. Res. Lett., 33, L03101, doi:10.1029/2005GL025020.