HR: 14:55h
AN: SM53C-06    [Abstracts]
TI: Tracing the location of the reconnection site from the northern and southern cusps
AU: * Trattner, K J
EM: trattner@spasci.com
AF: Lockheed Martin ATC, B/255, ADCS 3251 Hanover St., Palo Alto, CA 94304 United States
AU: Fuselier, S A
EM: fuselier@spasci.com
AF: Lockheed Martin ATC, B/255, ADCS 3251 Hanover St., Palo Alto, CA 94304 United States
AU: Petrinec, S M
EM: petrinec@spasci.com
AF: Lockheed Martin ATC, B/255, ADCS 3251 Hanover St., Palo Alto, CA 94304 United States
AU: Peterson, W K
EM: william.k.peterson@nasa.gov
AF: Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, 1234 Innovation Drive, Boulder, CO 80303 United States
AB: Full 3D plasma observations in the cusp have been successfully used to investigate the location of the reconnection site at the magnetopause. In this model low-velocity cutoffs in the precipitating and mirrored magnetosheath population on open cusp field lines are used to estimate the distance to the reconnection line. This distance is subsequently traced back along the model magnetic field lines to the magnetopause. Two cusp crossings on March 3, 2003, observed by the Cluster satellites in the northern hemisphere and the Polar spacecraft in the southern hemisphere during similar solar wind and southward IMF conditions, are used to trace the location of the reconnection site from two directions. Both estimates point to a reconnection site in the southern hemisphere close to the anti-parallel reconnection site.
DE: 7835 Magnetic reconnection
DE: 2724 Magnetopause, cusp, and boundary layers
DE: 2731 Magnetosphere--outer
DE: 2784 Solar wind/magnetosphere interactions
SC: SPA-Magnetospheric Physics [SM]
MN: 2004 AGU Fall Meeting