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Cluster finds giant gas vortices at the edge of Earth’s magnetic bubble

12 August 2004

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This figure shows a three-dimensional cut-away view of Earth' s magnetosphere. The curly features sketched on the boundary layer are the Kelvin-Helmholtz vortices discovered by Cluster. They originate where two adjacent flows travel with different speed. In this case, one of the flows is the heated gas inside the boundary layer of the magnetosphere, the other the solar wind just outside it. The arrows show the direction of the magnetic field, in red that associated with the solar wind and in green the one inside Earth’s magnetosphere. The white dashed arrow shows the trajectory followed by Cluster.

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High resolution version (TIFF format) 15 365 Kb

Credits: H. Hasegawa (Dartmouth College)

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This computer simulation shows how the density of the electrified gas is expected to vary across the vortices along Cluster’s trajectory (white dashed line). The density is lower inside the boundary layer (blue region) and higher outside, in the region dominated by the solar wind (shown in red). The density variations measured by the instruments on board Cluster match those predicted by this model.

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Credits: H. Hasegawa (Dartmouth College)

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