Using measurements of Energetic Neutral Atoms from low Earth orbit to infer global magnetospheric ion distributions

Abstract

We show here that ENA observations from low Earth orbit (LEO) are worthy of consideration for remote sensing of the inner magnetosphere. We present simulations of energetic ion distributions retrieved from energetic neutral atom (ENA) images obtained from LEO. These simulations show that a large portion of the inner magnetosphere can be observed from a single spacecraft and that quantitative results can be extracted from such observations. We also demonstrate that even in a case where the assumed magnetic field topology is in error, useful results can still be obtained. Copyright 2008 by the American Geophysical Union.