Abstract
AbstractThe magnetosheath and near‐Earth solar wind emit X‐rays due to charge‐exchange between the extended atmosphere and highly ionized particles in the solar wind. These emissions can be used to remotely sense the dynamic processes in this region. The Solar Wind Magnetosphere Ionosphere Link Explorer mission will carry out these measurements. In a previous paper, we looked at the effect of photon counting statistics on determining the location of the magnetopause and bow shock. In this paper we explore, through simulations, the more challenging question of orbital viewing geometry bias when the model and the emissions do not match each other exactly. Our simulations conclude that while care must be taken to avoid false minima in the fitting, there is very little to no orbital bias in extracting the position and large‐scale shape of the magnetopause and bow shocks from 2‐D X‐ray images from the future Solar Wind Magnetosphere Ionosphere Link Explorer mission.
Highlights
X-ray imaging of the solar wind charge exchange (SWCX) processes in Earth's magnetosheath and nearby solar wind can provide a wealth of information about the dynamic processes which take place in those regions. Sibeck et al (2018) provide a very thorough and extensive review of developments in the field of X-ray imaging and related fields
We found that for the portions of the orbit where the camera has a wide view of the dayside magnetopause, magnetosheath, and bow shock, the parameters fit to the 3-D MHD data are not very sensitive to the orbital viewing geometry
We found that the fitted parameters of the combined 11-parameter model are similar to the parameters of the boundary models fit to the magnetopause grid points and the bow shock grid points, with some notable offsets; in the combined fit, the location of the subsolar point on the magnetopause is approximately 0.1 RE closer to the Earth than when fitting to the boundary points
Summary
X-ray imaging of the solar wind charge exchange (SWCX) processes in Earth's magnetosheath and nearby solar wind can provide a wealth of information about the dynamic processes which take place in those regions. Sibeck et al (2018) provide a very thorough and extensive review of developments in the field of X-ray imaging and related fields. Astronomical missions have confirmed SWCX in the magnetosheath (Carter et al, 2010; Snowden et al, 2009). Because these processes often operate on minute time scales, it is important to be able to snapshot image on a similar time scale to minimize smearing of the structures being observed. SMILE will image the subsolar region of the magnetosphere, magnetosheath, and bow shock from an elliptical orbit with an altitude above the north pole of approximately 19 Earth radii. Extracting the large-scale structures of this region from the images can be done by fitting a parameterized model to the images. We have previously developed such a model and used it to determine the necessary count rates required to determine locations of boundaries to specified accuracies and found that the required count rates correspond well with the expected count rates from the SMILE mission (Jorgensen et al, 2019)
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