Understanding the role of exospheric density in the ring current recovery rate

Cucho‐Padin, Gonzalo; Ferradas, C.; Waldrop, L.; Fok, M. H.

doi:10.1002/essoar.10505770.1

Cited by 1 publication

(1 citation statement)

References 13 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Furthermore, the exosphere is embedded within the many distinct plasma environments spanning the topside ionosphere, plasmasphere, ring-current system, and solar wind. Charge exchange interactions between exospheric H atoms and ambient ions are well known to play a crucial role in governing the earth's transient response to space weather, both by dissipating magnetospheric ring current energy through the generation of energetic neutral atoms (ENAs) and by driving the ion transport responsible for plasmaspheric refilling after geomagnetic storms (Ilie et al, 2012;Krall et al, 2018;Cucho-Padin et al, 2020). Due to its relevance in magnetospheric physics, efforts have been made to estimate three-dimensional (3-D), time-dependent, and global H density distributions using sophisticated remote sensing techniques based on measurements of the terrestrial Ly-α emission (Bailey and Gruntman, 2011;Zoennchen et al, 2015;Cucho-Padin and Waldrop, 2018;.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

EXOSpy: A python package to investigate the terrestrial exosphere and its FUV emission

Cucho‐Padin

Bhattacharyya

Sibeck

et al. 2023

Front. Astron. Space Sci.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The exosphere is the uppermost layer of the terrestrial atmosphere, mainly composed of atomic hydrogen (H) that resonantly scatters solar far-ultraviolet (FUV) photons at 121.56 nm, also referred to as Lyman-Alpha (Ly-α) emission. Analysis of this emission has been used to determine the global, three-dimensional, and time-dependent exospheric H density structure, which is essential to assess the permanent escape of H to space as well as to determine their role in governing the transient response of terrestrial plasma environment to space weather. Thus, Ly-α emission and its by-product, the H density, are highly desirable to the magnetospheric community. On the other hand, this emission can also be regarded as a significant source of contamination during studies of FUV targets such as O/B-type stars, planetary and exoplanetary atmospheres, and the circumgalactic medium, especially when observations are acquired from Earth-orbiting instruments. In this case, accurate specification of exospheric Ly-α photon flux and its subsequent removal is required by the planetary and astrophysics community studying solar/extra-solar system objects. This work introduces EXOSpy, an open-source python-based package that provides several models of terrestrial exospheric H density and calculates exospheric Ly-α emission with a high potential to contribute to investigations in both communities. We present several examples to demonstrate how EXOSpy can be used to (i) validate current and new exospheric models based on actual Ly-α radiance data, (ii) estimate exospheric contamination for a given instrument’s line-of-sight and spatial location, and (iii) provide support for new space-based FUV instrument design.

show abstract