HR: 16:55h
AN: SM24A-04    [Abstracts]
TI: Chandra Observations of Soft X-ray Emissions from Earth and Jupiter
AU: * Gladstone, R
EM: rgladstone@swri.edu
AF: Southwest Research Institute, 6220 Culebra Road, San Antonio, TX 78238-5166 United States
AU: Elsner, R
EM: Ron.Elsner@msfc.nasa.gov
AF: NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, NSSTC, 320 Sparkman Drive, Huntsville, AL 35805 United States
AU: Bhardwaj, A
EM: Anil.Bhardwaj@msfc.nasa.gov
AF: NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, NSSTC, 320 Sparkman Drive, Huntsville, AL 35805 United States
AU: Ostgaard, N
EM: Nikolai.Ostgaard@ift.uib.no
AF: University of Bergen, Allegt. 55, Bergen, N-5007 Norway
AU: Waite, H
EM: hunterw@umich.edu
AF: University of Michigan, 2455 Hayward St., Ann Arbor, 48109 United States
AU: Majeed, T
EM: tariqm@umich.edu
AF: University of Michigan, 2455 Hayward St., Ann Arbor, 48109 United States
AU: Chang, S
EM: Shen.Chang@msfc.nasa.gov
AF: NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, NSSTC, 320 Sparkman Drive, Huntsville, AL 35805 United States
AU: Cravens, T
EM: cravens@ku.edu
AF: University of Kansas, 1251 Wescoe Hall Dr., Lawrence, KS 66045 United States
AU: Metzger, A
EM: aem@eros.jpl.nasa.gov
AF: NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, 4800 Oak Grove Dr., Pasadena, CA 91109 United States
AB: Earth was observed using the High-Resolution Camera (HRC-I) aboard the Chandra X-Ray Observatory at 10 epochs between mid-December 2003 and mid-April 2004. Each observation was $\sim20$~minutes in duration, with fixed pointing so that the north polar cusp was allowed to drift through the HRC-I field-of-view ($30'\times30'$, or about $1150\times1150$~km$^2$ at the Earth as seen from Chandra apogee). The observations were performed during northern winter, so that the northern auroral region was mostly dark and fluoresced solar x-ray contamination could be avoided. The investigation was designed to compare Earth's soft x-ray auroral emissions with previous Chandra observations of Jupiter's x-ray aurora, where a pulsating x-ray "hot-spot" near the northern magnetic pole was observed which indicated a possible source due to the entry of heavy solar wind ions into the jovian cusp. The first Chandra soft (0.1-5 keV) x-ray observations of Earth's aurora show that it is highly variable (intense arcs, multiple arcs, diffuse patches, at times absent). In at least one of the observations an isolated blob of emission was seen in the expected cusp location. A fortuitously-timed overflight of a DMSP satellite (F13) provided SSJ4 particle measurements which indicate that at least one of the bright arcs we observed is produced by electron bremsstrahlung. Other preliminary results from these unique Chandra observations of Earth will be presented and discussed.
DE: 2704 Auroral phenomena (2407)
DE: 0310 Airglow and aurora
SC: SPA-Magnetospheric Physics [SM]
MN: 2004 AGU Fall Meeting