Earth's Radiation Belts Tremble Under Impact of Solar Storm (2004)

Synopsis

Under the wave of energetic particles from the Halloween 2003 solar storm events, the Earth's radiation belts underwent significant changes in structure. This visualization is constructed using daily-averaged particle flux data from the SAMPEX satellite installed in a simple dipole model for the Earth's magnetic field. The toroidal structure of the belts corresponds to regions with electron fluxes in excess of 100 electrons/s/cm^2/steradian with energies of 2-6 MeV. The color-scale on the cross section is violet for low flux and white for high flux. The translucent gray arcs represent the fields lines of the Earth's dipole field. The 3-dimensional structure was built from the SAMPEX measurement by propagating the particle flux values along field lines of a simple magnetic dipole.

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NASA

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