Using a technique called neutral atom imaging from a satellite high above the North Pole, researchers at the Department of Energy's Los Alamos National Laboratory are developing pictures of the magnetosphere, an invisible magnetic layer around the Earth. Los Alamos' research was presented today at the Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco. Used as still pictures or animated for time-lapse movies, their pictures show the ebb and flow of these particles as they near the earth and are drawn around and down the magnetic field lines. These images are especially critical for understanding the progress and structure of a space phenomenon called geomagnetic storms.
Geomagnetic storms are the space equivalent of hurricanes in the Atlantic.
This is similar to discovering that hurricanes and thunderstorms are related, but that a hurricane is not just a cluster of thunderstorms or a larger, more intense thunderstorm. While some of these results were suspected before, neutral atom imaging has allowed us to 'see' the process and study it in detail for the first time. Understanding how protons move around the earth during and after solar storms can provide protective navigation guidance to satellites, permit scheduling of astronauts' space walks at safer times and alert researchers to shield vulnerable satellite instruments. Neutral atom imaging takes advantage of rare collisions, called charge-exchange collisions, between magnetospheric ions and atoms that have escaped from the Earth's atmosphere. The newly-created neutral atoms are collected from remote locations to create images of the magnetosphere.