Imperial College London

DrRobertForsyth

Faculty of Natural SciencesDepartment of Physics

Reader in Space Physics
 
 
 
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Contact

 

+44 (0)20 7594 7761r.forsyth Website

 
 
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Location

 

6M64Huxley BuildingSouth Kensington Campus

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Summary

 

Publications

Citation

BibTex format

@article{Good:2015:2/177,
author = {Good, SW and Forsyth, RJ and Raines, JM and Gershman, DJ and Slavin, JA and Zurbuchen, TH},
doi = {2/177},
journal = {Astrophysical Journal},
pages = {177--189},
title = {Radial Evolution of a Magnetic Cloud: MESSENGER, STEREO, and Venus Express Observations},
url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1088/0004-637X/807/2/177},
volume = {807},
year = {2015}
}

RIS format (EndNote, RefMan)

TY  - JOUR
AB - The Solar Orbiter and Solar Probe Plus missions will provide observations of magnetic clouds closer to the Sunthan ever before, and it will be good preparation for these missions to make full use of the most recent in situ datasets from the inner heliosphere—namely, those provided by MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry,and Ranging (MESSENGER) and Venus Express—for magnetic cloud studies. We present observations of thesame magnetic cloud made by MESSENGER at Mercury and later by Solar TErrestrial RElations Observatory-B(STEREO-B), while the spacecraft were radially aligned in 2011 November. Few such radial observations ofmagnetic clouds have been previously reported. Estimates of the solar wind speed at MESSENGER are alsopresented, calculated through the application of a previously established technique. The clouds flux rope has beenanalyzed using force-free fitting; the rope diameter increased from 0.18 to 0.41 AU (corresponding to an rH0.94dependence on heliocentric distance, rH), and the axial magnetic field strength dropped from 46.0 to 8.7 nT (an -rH1.84 dependence) between the spacecraft, clear indications of an expanding structure. The axial magnetic flux was∼0.50 nT AU2 at both spacecraft, suggesting that the rope underwent no significant erosion through magneticreconnection between MESSENGER and STEREO-B. Further, we estimate the change in the clouds angular widthby assuming helicity conservation. It has also been found that the rope axis rotated by 30° between the spacecraftto lie close to the solar equatorial plane at STEREO-B. Such a rotation, if it is a common feature of coronal massejection propagation, would have important implications for space weather forecasting.
AU - Good,SW
AU - Forsyth,RJ
AU - Raines,JM
AU - Gershman,DJ
AU - Slavin,JA
AU - Zurbuchen,TH
DO - 2/177
EP - 189
PY - 2015///
SN - 1538-4357
SP - 177
TI - Radial Evolution of a Magnetic Cloud: MESSENGER, STEREO, and Venus Express Observations
T2 - Astrophysical Journal
UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.1088/0004-637X/807/2/177
UR - http://hdl.handle.net/10044/1/25641
VL - 807
ER -