September 21, 2018, 1:00 pm - 2:00 pm

Aug 2, 2019, 1:15 pm - 2:15 pm, SED Director's Seminar, Hosted by the Heliophysics Science Division's Ionosphere, Thermosphere, and Mesosphere Physics Laboratory (675)

STEVE

Bea Gallardo-Lacourt

The recent discovery of the subauroral phenomenon called STEVE (Strong Thermal Emission Velocity Enhancement) has been an exciting development in space physics research. Discovered by citizen scientists, STEVE is an extremely thin, yet long ribbon of vibrant purple and white hues across the night-sky occurring in the upper-atmosphere. Scientific space and ground-based instruments, combined with citizen scientists' data, have provided unique tools to analyze STEVE. In this talk we will review some of the current understanding of this phenomenon.

VISIONS-2: IMAGING ION ENERGIZATION IN THE CUSP

Douglas Rowland

On December 7, 2018, NASA’s VISIONS-2 (VISualizing Ion Outflow via Neutral atom Sensing – 2) sounding rocket mission was launched from Ny Ålesund, Svalbard into the geomagnetic cusp, to study processes that energize and eject ions from Earth’s atmosphere. Part of the multinational “Grand Challenge Initiative – Cusp”, VISIONS-2 was designed to image the heated ion populations that result when Earth’s atmosphere is exposed to soft electron precipitation and strong plasma convection in the cusp. Imaging these populations is made possible by the MILENA (Miniaturized Low Energy Neutral Atom imager) instrument, developed at NASA GSFC, which can detect the energetic neutral atoms that are produced when accelerated ions charge exchange with the neutral atmosphere. The VISIONS-2 mission was designed to fly two Black Brant X sounding rocket vehicles through the geomagnetic cusp, within two minutes of each other. These vehicles reached apogees near 600 and 800 km, and measured the accelerated ions and the processes that heat and energize them, both locally (with in situ sensors) and remotely (with the neutral atom imagers and a multispectral auroral camera onboard the rocket). I will present the initial results from the VISIONS-2 mission, including results from the rocket instruments and the ground-based observations (all sky imagers, EISCAT radar, and CUTLASS radar). Those results show that VISIONS-2 flew through an active cusp region, with soft precipitation, and associated heavy ion heating and upflow.