Additions to the pile: Week of 26 November 2007

Since Thanksgiving was last week, it was a relatively slow week in the AGU publications department. Just two papers of interest this week.

Glassmeier, K.-H., H.-U. Auster, and U. Motschmann (2007), A feedback dynamo generating Mercury's magnetic field, GRL 34, L22201.

Podesta, J. J. (2007), Self-similar scaling of kinetic energy density in the inertial range of solar wind turbulence, JGR 112. A11104.

Additions to the pile: Week of 19 November 2007

Just two papers last week:

Kataoka, R., N. Nishitani, Y. Ebihara, K. Hosokawa, T. Ogawa, T. Kikuchi, and Y. Miyoshi (2007), Dynamic variations of a convection flow reversal in the subauroral postmidnight sector as seen by the SuperDARN Hokkaido HF radar, GRL 34, L21105.

Russell, A. T., J.-P. St.-Maurice, R. J. Sica, and J.-M. Noël (2007), Composition changes during disturbed conditions: Are mass spectrometers overestimating the concentrations of atomic oxygen?, GRL 34, L21106.

Additions to the pile: Week of 12 November 2007

It's been a while since my last trip, so the pile of papers to be read is growing. Here's the latest batch:

Winglee, R. M., and E. M. Harnett (2007), Radiation mitigation at the Moon by the terrestrial magnetosphere, GRL 34, L21103.

Bertucci, C., F. M. Neubauer, K. Szego, J.-E. Wahlund, A. J. Coates, M. K. Dougherty, D. T. Young, and W. S. Kurth (2007), Structure of Titan's mid-range magnetic tail: Cassini magnetometer observations during the T9 flyby, GRL 34, L24S02.

Szego, K., Z. Bebesi, C. Bertucci, A. J. Coates, F. J. Crary, G. Erdos, R. Hartle, E. C. Sittler, and D. T. Young (2007), Charged particle environment of Titan during the T9 flyby, GRL 34, L24S03.

Fuselier, S. A., S. M. Petrinec, K. J. Trattner, M. Fujimoto, and H. Hasegawa (2007), Simultaneous observations of fluctuating cusp aurora and low-latitude magnetopause reconnection, JGR 112, A11207.

Tap tap tap

Is this thing on?

I got two cites from a recent review paper (added to the pile):

Moore, T. E., and J. L. Horwitz (2007), Stellar ablation of planetary atmospheres, Rev. Geophys. 45, 3002.

Additions to the pile: Week of 17 September 2007

Papers of interest in AGU journals last week:

Chapman, S. C., and B. Hnat (2007), Quantifying scaling in the velocity field of the anisotropic turbulent solar wind, GRL 34, L17103.

Eastwood, J. P., S. D. Bale, F. S. Mozer, and A. J. Hull (2007), Contributions to the cross shock electric field at a quasiperpendicular collisionless shock, GRL 34, L17104.

Zong, Q.-G., X.-Z. Zhou, X. Li, P. Song, S. Y. Fu, D. N. Baker, Z. Y. Pu, T. A. Fritz, P. Daly, A. Balogh, and H. Réme (2007), Correction to "Ultralow frequency modulation of energetic particles in the dayside magnetosphere," GRL 34, L17106. The original reference is GRL 34, L12105, 2007.

Horne, R. B., R. M. Thorne, S. A. Glauert, N. P. Meredith, D. Pokhotelov, and O. Santolík (2007), Electron acceleration in the Van Allen radiation belts by fast magnetosonic waves, GRL 34, L17107.

Mende, S. B., V. Angelopoulos, H. U. Frey, S. Harris, E. Donovan, B. Jackel, M. Syrjaesuo, C. T. Russell, and I. Mann (2007), Determination of substorm onset timing and location using the THEMIS ground based observatories, GRL 34, L17108.

Cully, C. M., R. E. Ergun, and A. I. Eriksson (2007), Electrostatic structure around spacecraft in tenuous plasmas, JGR 112, A09211.

Additions to the pile: Week of 10 September 2007

Papers of interest in AGU journals last week:

Sandel, B. R. and M. H. Denton (2007), Global view of refilling the plasmasphere, GRL 34, L17102.

Brain, D. A., R. J. Lillis, D. L. Mitchell, J. S. Halekas, and R. P. Lin (2007), Electron pitch angle distriburions as indicators of magnetic field topology near Mars, JGR 112, A09201.

Newell, P. T., S. Wing, and F. J. Rich (2007), Cusp for high and low merging rates, JGR 112, A09205.

Liang, J., and W. W. Liu (2007), A MHD mechanism for the generation of the meridional current system dirung substorm expansion phase, JGR 112, A09208.

Seyler, C. E., and K. Liu (2007), Particle energization by oblique inertial Alfvén waves in the auroral region, JGR 112, A09302.

Lessard, M. R., W. Lotko, J. LaBelle, W. Peria, C. W. Carlson, F. Creutzberg, and D. D. Wallis (2007), Ground and satellite observations of the evolution of growth phase auroral arcs, JGR 112, A09304.

Alfvén waves in the solar corona

The current issue of Science (I read the dead tree version) has an article reporting observations of Alfvén waves in the solar corona. The abstract:

Alfvén waves, transverse incompressible magnetic oscillations, have been proposed as a possible mechanism to heat the Sun's corona to millions of degrees by transporting convective energy from the photosphere into the diffuse corona. We report the detection of Alfvén waves in intensity, line-of-sight velocity, and linear polarization images of the solar corona taken using the FeXIII 1074.7-nanometer coronal emission line with the Coronal Multi-Channel Polarimeter (CoMP) instrument at the National Solar Observatory, New Mexico. Ubiquitous upward propagating waves were seen, with phase speeeds of 1 to 4 megameters per second and trajectories consistent with the direction of the magnetic field inferred from the linear polarization measurements. An estimate of the energy carried by the waves that we spatially resolved indicates that they are too weak to heat the solar corona; however, unresolved Alfvén waves may carry sufficient energy.

The reference is S. Tomczyk et al. (2007), Science 317, 1192.

There is substantial in situ evidence, of which Tomczyk et al. appear to be unaware (their paper does not cite any of the magnetospheric literature), that Alfvén waves contribute to heating of ionospheric plasma in the auroral acceleration region (see, e.g., G. Paschmann et al. (2002), Space Science Reviews 103, 1.

Additions to the pile: Week of 3 September 2007

Papers of interest in AGU journals in the last week:

Vedin, J., K. Rönnmark, C. Bunescu, and O. Marghitu (2007), Estimating properties of concentrated parallel electric fields from electron velocity distributions, GRL 34, L16107.

Malova, H. V., L. M> Zelenyi, V. Y. Popov, D. C. Delcourt, A. A. Petrukovich, and A. V. Runov (2007), Asymmetric thin current sheets in the Earth's magnetotail, GRL 34, L16108.

Saito, S. and T. Maruyama (2007), Large-scale longitudinal variation in ionospheric height and equatorial spread F occurrences observded by ionosondes, GRL 34, L16109.

Wing, S., J. W. Gjerloev, J. R. Johnson, and R. A. Hoffman (2007), Substorm plasma sheet ion pressure profiles, GRL 34, L16110.

Katoh, Y., and Y. Omura (2007), Correction to "Relativistic particle acceleration in the process of whistler-mode chorus wave generation", GRL 34, L17101. The original reference is GRL 34, L13102.

Heelis, R. A., and W. R. Coley (2007), Variations in the low- and mid-latitude topside ion concentration observed by DMSP during superstorm events, JGR 112, A08310.

Additions to the pile: Week of 27 August 2007

A slowdown due to summer vacations? Only one GRL in the last week, and three JGRs in the last two weeks.

Kuritsyn, A., H. Ji, S. P. Gerhardt, Y. Ren, and M. Yamada (2007), Effects of global boundary and local collisionality on magnetic reconnection in a laboratory plasma, GRL 34, L16106.

Hollweg, J. V., and P. A. Isenberg (2007), Reflection of Alfvén waves in the corona and solar wind: An impulse function approach, JGR 112, A08102.

Gosling, J. T., S. Eriksson, D. J. McComas, T. D. Phan, and R. M. Skoug (2007), Multiple magnetic reconnection sites associated with a coronal mass ejection in the solar wind, JGR 112, A08106.

Frederick-Frost, K. M., K. A. Lynch, P. M. Kintner, E. Klatt, D. Lorentzen, J. Moen, Y. Ogawa, and M. Widholm (2007), SERSIO: Swalbard EISCAT rocket study of ion outflows, JGR 112, A08307.

Additions to the pile: Week of 20 August 2007

AGU's website was getting hammered yesterday, so I only checked GRL.

Bortnik, J., R. M. Thorne, N. P. Meredith, and O. Santolik (2007), Ray tracing of penetrating chorus and its implications for the radiation belts, GRL 34, L15109.

Gosling, J. T., T. D. Phan, R. P. Lin, and A. Szabo (2007), Prevalence of magnetic reconnection at small field shear angles in the solar wind, GRL 34, L15110.

Vennerstrom, S., F. Christiansen, N. Olsen, and T. Moretto (2007), On the cause of IMF B_y related mid- and low latitude magnetic disturbances, GRL 34, L16101.

Additions to the pile: Weeks of 6 August and 13 August 2007

Articles of interest in the last two weeks:

Sitnov, M. I., P. N. Guzdar, and M. Swisdak (2007), Atypical durrent sheets and plasma bubbles: A self-consistent kinetic model, GRL 34, L15101.

Trávníček, P., P. Hellinger, M. G. G. T. Taylor, C. P. Escoubet, I. Dandouras, and E. Lucek (2007), Magnetosheath plasma expansion: Hybrid simulations, GRL 34, L15104.

Hubert, B., K. Kauristie, O. Amm, S. E. Milan, A. Grocott, S. W. H. Cowley, and T. I. Pulkkinen (2007), Auroral streamers and magnetic flux closure, GRL 34, L15105.

Bahcivan, H. (2007), Plasma wave heating during extreme electric fields in the high latitude E region, GRL 34, L15106.

Watanabe, M., A. Kadokura, N. Sato, and T. Saemundsson (2007), Absence of geomagnetic conjugacy in pulsating auroras, GRL 34, L15107. At 7 pages, longer than some JGR papers.

Villante, U., P. Francia, M. Vellante, P. Di Giuseppe, A. Nubile, and M. Piersanti (2007), Correction to "Long-period oscillations at discrete frequencies: A comparative analysis of ground, magnetospheric , and interplanetary observations," JGR 112, A08202. The original paper is JGR 112, A04210.

Fairfield, D. H., M. M. Kuznetsova, T. Mukai, T. Nagai, T. I. Gombosi, and A. J. Ridley (2007), Waves on the dusk flank boundary layer during very northward interplanetary magnetic field conditions: Observations and simulation, JGR 112, A08206.

Trattner, K. J., J. S. Mulcock, S. M. Petrinec, and S. A. Fuselier (2007), Probing the boundary between antiparallel and component reconnection during southward interplanetary magnetic field conditions, JGR 112, A08210.

Additions to the pile: Weeks of 23 and 30 July 2007

Catching up on the literature after a week away.

Lavraud, B., J. E. Borovsky, A. J. Ridley, E. W. Pogue, M. F. Thomsen, H. Rème, A. N. Fazakerley, and E. A. Lucek (2007), Strong bulk plasma acceleration in Earth's magnetosheath: A magnetic slingshot effect?, GRL 34, L14102.

Phan, T. D., G. Paschmann, C. Twitty, F. S. Mozer, J. T. Gosling, J. P. Eastwood, M. Øieroset, H. Rème, and E. A. Lucek (2007), Evidence for magnetic reconnection initiated in the magnetosheath, GRL 34, L14104.

Schwadron, N. A., and D. J. McComas (2007), Modulation of anomalous and galactic cosmic rays beyond the termination shock, GRL 34, L14105.

Tokunaga, T., H. Kohta, A. Yoshikawa, T. Uozumi, and K. Yumoto (2007), Global features of Pi 2 pulsations obtained by independent component analysis, GRL 34, L14106.

Liou, K. (2007), Large, abrupt pressure decreases as a substorm onset trigger, GRL 34, L14107.

André, N., A. M. Persoon, J. Goldstein, J. L. Burch, P. Louarn, G. R. Lewis, A. M. Rymer, A. J. Coates, W. S. Kurth, E. C. Sittler, M. F. Thomsen, F. J. Crary, M. K. Dougherty, D. A. Gurnett, and D. T. Young (2007), Magnetic signatures of plasma-depleted flux tubes in the Saturnian inner magnetosphere, GRL 34, L14108.

Hellinger, P., P. Trávniček, B. Lembège, and P. Savoini (2007), Emission of nonlinear whistler waves at the front of perpendicular supercritical shocks: Hybrid versus full particle simulations, GRL 34, L14109.

Gary, S. P., and S. Saito (2007), Broadening of solar wind strahl pitch-angles by the electron/electron instability: Particle-in-cell simulations, GRL 34, L14111.

Chen, M. W., C.-P. Wang, M. Schultz, and L. R. Lyons (2007), Solar-wind influence on MLT dependence of plasma sheet conditions and their effects on storm time ring current formation, GRL 34, L14112.

Kawano, H., and D.-H. Lee (2007), Gradient methods applied to simulated ULF data: The effects of the ionospheric damping factor, JGR 112, A07212.

Gjerloev, J. W., R. A. Hoffman, J. B. Sigwarth, and L. A. Frank (2007), Statistical description of the bulge-type auroral substorm in the far ultraviolet, JGR 112, A07213.

Hu, Y. Q., X. C. Guo, and C. Wang (2007), On the ionospheric and reconnection potentials of the earth: Results from global MHD simulations, JGR 112, A07215.

Toivanen, P. K., Deformation method for electromagnetic magnetospheric fields: 2. Application to the earth's magnetosphere, JGR 112, A07216. Presumably the companion paper to Toivanen's paper earlier this month.

Liu, Y. C.-M., M. A. Lee, H. Kucharek, and B. Miao (2007), Ion thermalization and wave excitation downstream of Earth's bow shock: A theory for Cluster observations of He²⁺ acceleration, JGR 112, A07217.

Matsui, H., P. A. Puhl-Quinn, R. B. Torbert, W. Baumjohann, C. J. Farrugia, C. G. Mouikis, E. A. Lucek, P. M. E. Décréau, and G. Paschmann (2007), JGR 112, A07218.

Additions to the pile: Week of 16 July 2007

A busy week on the publication front, including a comment-reply exchange and a preprint on which my name is listed:

Golovchanskaya, I. V. (2007), On the seasonal variation of electric and magnetic turbulence at high latitudes, GRL 34, L13103.

Karimabadi, H., W. Daughton, and J. Scudder (2007), Multi-scale structure of the electron diffusion region, GRL 34, L13104.

Singh, N. (2007), Interpretation of solar wind reconnection exhaust in terms of kinetic Alfvén wave group-velocity cones, GRL 34, L13106.

Lukianova, R. (2007), Comment on "Unified PCN and PCS indices: Method of calculation, physical sense, and dependence on IMF azimuthal and northward components" by O. Troshichev, A. Janzhura, and P. Stauning, JGR 112, A07204. The original paper is JGR 111, A05208 (2006), and these authors reply at JGR 112, A07205 (2007). (Ed. note: It's never a good sign when a comment runs to 8 journal pages.)

Singh, N. (2007), Group velocity cones in diverging magnetic reconnection structures, JGR 112, A07209.

Liu, W. W. (2007), Polar cap potential saturation: An energy conservation perspective, JGR 112, A07210.

Rodger, C. J., M. A. Cliverd, D. Nunn, P. T. Verronen, J. Bortnik, and E. Turunen (2007), Storm time, short-lived bursts of relativistic electron precipitation detected by subionospheric radio wave propagation, JGR 112, A07301.

Yao, Y., K. Seki, Y. Miyoshi, J. P. McFadden, E. J. Lund, and C. W. Carlson (2007), Effect of solar wind variation on low-energy O+ populations in the magnetosphere during geomagnetic storms: FAST observations, JGR, to be submitted.

Additions to the pile: Week of 9 July 2007

Three papers and a preprint in the last week:

Carlson, H. C. (2007), Role of neutral atmospheric dynamics in cusp density and ionospheric patch formation, GRL 34, L13101.

Katoh, Y., and Y. Omura (2007), Relativistic particle acceleration in the process of whistler-mode chorus, GRL 34, L13102.

Šafránková, J., Z. Němeček, L. Přech, J. Ṧimůnek, D. Sibeck, and J.-A. Sauvaud (2007), Variations of the flank LLBL thickness as response to the solar wind dynamic pressure and IMF orientation, JGR 112, A07201.

Hwang, K.-J., R. E. Ergun, L. Andersson, D. L. Newman, and C. W. Carlson (2007), Test particle simulations of the effect of moving DLs on ion outflow in the auroral downward current region, JGR, to be submitted.

Additions to the pile: Week of 2 july 2007

Three more papers on the pile:

Zong, Q.-G., X.-Z. Zhou, X. Li, P. Song, S. Y. Fu, D. N. Baker, Z. Y. Pu, T. A. Fritz, P. Daly, A. Balogh, and H. Rème (2007), Ultralow forequency modulation of energetic particles in the dayside magnetosphere, GRL 34, L12105.

Morioka, A., Y. Miyoshi, F. Tsuchiya, H. Misawa, T. Sakanoi, K. Yumoto, R. R. Anderson, J. D. Menietti, and E. F. Donovan (2007), Dual structure of auroral acceleration regions at substorm onsets as derived from auroral kilometric radiation spectra, JGR 112, A06245.

Woodfield, E. E., M. W. Dunlop, R. Holme, J. A. Davies, and M. A. Hapgood (2007), A comparison of Cluster magnetic data with the Tsyganenko 2001 model, JGR 112, A06248.

Additions to the pile: Week of 25 June 2007

It's a good thing that I made it all the way through the pile for my airplane reading, because a whole bunch of papers came out in the last two weeks. On the list below, the first three are papers/preprints I collected at the GEM workshop, and the rest were published since 11 June in AGU journals.

Omidi, N., and D. G. Sibeck (2007), Flux transfer events in the cusp, GRL 34, L04106.

Nishimura, Y., A. Shinbori, T. Ono, M. Iizima, and A. Kumamoto (2007), Evolution of ring current and radiation belt particles under the influence of storm-time electric fields, JGR, in press.

Anderson, P. C., W. R. Johnston, J. Goldstein, and T. P. O'Brien (2007), Observations of the ionospheric projection of the plasmapause and comparisons with relativistic electron measurements, GRL, submitted.

Parrot, M., J. A. Sauvaud, J. J. Berthelier, and J. P. Lebreton (2007), First in-situ observations of strong ionospheric perturbations generated by a powerful VLF ground-based transmitter, GRL 34, L11111.

Jackman, C. M., C. T. Russell, D. J. Southwood, C. S. Arridge, N. Achilleos, and M. K. Dougherty (2007), Strong rapid dipolarizations in Saturn's magnetotail: In situ evidence of reconnection, GRL 34, L11203.

Fillingim, M. O., L. M. Peticolas, R. J. Lillis, D. A. Brain, J. S. Halekas, D. L. Mitchell, R. P. Lin, D. Lummerzheim, S. W. Bougher, and D. L. Kirchner (2007), Model calculations of electron precipitation induced ionization patches on the nightside of Mars, GRL 34, L12101.

Leisner, J. S., C. T. Russell, K. K. Khurana, and M. K. Dougherty (2007), Measuring the stress state of the Saturnian magnetosphere, GRL 34, L12103.

Pritchett, P. L., and F. V. Coroniti (2007), Plasma sheet response to the ionosphere's demand for field-aligned current, GRL 34, L12104.

Moore, L., and M. Mendillo (2007), Are plasma depletions in Saturn's ionosphere a signature of time-dependent water input?, GRL 34, L12202.

Nakajima, A., K. Shiokawa, K. Seki, R. J. Strangeway, J. P. McFadden, and C. W. Carlson (2007), Particle and field characteristics of broadband electrons observaed by the FAST satellite during a geomagnetic storm, JGR 112. A06220.

Matsumoto, Y., and K. Seki (2007), The secondary instability initiated by the three-dimensional nonlinear evolution of the Kelvin-Helmholtz instability, JGR 112. A06223.

Siscoe, G. L., and K. D. Siebert (2007), Comment on "Polar cap voltage saturation" by J. W. MacDougall and P. T. Jayachandran, JGR 112, A06227. The subject paper of the comment is JGR 111, A12306 (2006), and the authors' reply is JGR 112, A06228 (2007).

García, K. S., and W. J. Hughes (2007), Finding the Lyon-Fedder-Mobarry magnetopause: A statistical perspective, JGR 112, A06229.

Ganguli, G., L. Rudakov, M. Mithaiwala, and K. Papadopoulos (2007), Generation and evolution of intense cyclotron turbulence by artificial plasma cloud in the magnetosphere, JGR 112, A06231.

Toivanen, P. K., Deformation method for electromagnetic magnetospheric fields: 1. Theory, JGR 112, A06239.

Lee, D.-Y., L. R. Lyons, J. M. Weygand, and C.-P. Wang (2007), Reasons why some solar wind changes do not trigger substorms, JGR 112, A06240.

Ueno, G., T. Higuchi, S. Ohtani, and P. T. Newell (2007), Particle precipitation characteristics in the dayside four-sheet field-aligned current structure, JGR 112, A06242.

GEM workshop: Friday plenary session

Today's tutorial speakers were Paul O'Brien of Aerospace on "Space radiation climatology: A new paradigm for inner magnetosphere simulation and data analysis" and Antonius Otto of University of Alaska-Fairbanks on "Plasma transport and entropy considerations at the magnetospheric flanks".

O'Brien discussed several examples of climatology and reanalysis as applied to inner magnetospheric physics. Reanalysis can constitute an extended event study and even become a data set in itself. This allows modelers to ignore most of the subtleties inherent in analyzing space plasma data. Data assimilation can help speed up codes and are useful when the underlying physics is not understood. O'Brien illustrated these points with several examples. Wiki: http://virbo.org/wiki/index.php/GEM2007.

Meeting fatigue has caught up with me; I didn't get anything out of Otto's tutorial.

This is the last year that Rice University organizes the conference. The conference arranger, Umbe Cantú, is truly an expert at conference organization, and GEM will miss her talents. Virginia Tech takes over next year, and the rumor is it will take four people to replace Umbe.

GEM workshop, Thursday poster session

The Thursday poster session was less than half the size of the Tuesday poster session. Unfortunately, almost all of the posters of interest to me were in the Tuesday session, and for many of the more interesting posters in this session the presenters were not with the posters when I looked at them. Meeting burnout was also a factor; many people will be leaving in the morning.

GEM workshop, Thursday breakout sessions

In the afternoon I attended two breakout sessions on diffuse aurora, continuing the breakout session from the previous afternoon.

Speakers in the first session were Mike Schultz (Lockheed) on theoretical particle tracing in a Dungey magnetosphere, Margaret Chen (Aerospace) on simulations in the Dungey magnetosphere, Richard Thorne (UCLA, on behalf of Richard Horne and Nigel Meredith of BAS) on diffuse aurora scattering rates by chorus emissions and ECH waves, Jacob Bortnik (UCLA) on modeling the global characteristics of chorus propagation, Wen Li (UCLA) on ray tracing with the HOTRAY code, Jay Albert (AFRL) on approximations of quasilinear diffusion coefficients, and R. P. Sharma (IIT) on nonlinear kinetic Alfvén waves and their role in particle precipitation. The reason Schultz and Chen use the Dungey magnetosphere is because it is analytically tractable, and an explicit Hamiltonian can be derived from a suitable electric field model (Brice-Nishida, Volland-Stern, or AMIE). Thorne pointed out the difficulty of scattering particles with 90 degree pitch angles at the equator. Bortnik showed that the lowest frequency chorus waves can propagate to the highest latitudes. Albert showed a method for calculating approximate diffusion coefficients which is significantly more accurate than the Summers method yet still represents a substantial speedup (factor of ~200) from the full calculation, which requires an infinite sum of triple integrals.

After the break, the topic was future plans for this focus group. It was decided that at this stage it is important to gather a list of relevant available data sets, and modeling efforts will proceed later. The most relevant data set for waves is THEMIS (it is necessary for the satellite to be in an equatorial orbit). For particles there are various geosynchronous satellites as well as low altitude satellites (DMSP and FAST) to look at precipitating particles. Ground-based measurements, especially all-sky cameras and meridian scanning photometers, are also of great importance for the study.

GEM workshop, Thursday plenary session

Today's plenary session speakers were Vassilis Angelopoulos of UC Berkeley (soon to join the UCLA faculty) on "Maximizing substorm science on THEMIS: Probe alignments and ground conjunctions" and Eric Donovan of Calgary on "Diffuse Aurora".

Angelopoulos is PI of the THEMIS mission. He reviewed the status of the THEMIS mission and some of the scientific topics to which THEMIS can contribute. At present THEMIS is in a string-of-pearls configuration with a separation of ~10000 km between the leading and trailing satellites and ~200 km between the middle three. Electric field antennas have been successfully deployed on three of the five spacecraft, and all other instruments are working on all five spacecraft. When the spacecraft are boosted to their final orbits sometime this fall, the orbits will be phased so that there will be a five-spacecraft conjunction every four days and four-spacecraft conjunctions every two days. Apogee will be in the tail from January through March with the conjunctions over the North America sector, where ground magnetometers and all sky cameras are deployed from Alaska to Labrador. Nominal science operations will begin 1 July, and science software will be rolled out to the community 31 July. There is an open data policy (consult with PI or co-Is, and credit NASA grant NAS5-02099). Already THEMIS is obtaining useful science data, including an observation of substorm onset with westward traveling surge, a measurement of a flux transfer event, and an observation of magnetopause reconnection. THEMIS will be able to track radial motion of electrons inward from the tail and measure electric and magnetic fields and waves locally. There are also potential contributions to dayside magnetospheric physics (this summer) and tracking of solar wind interaction with the magnetopause (summer 2008). Nominal mission lasts until about March 2009, with extensions possible given consumables budget and radiation margin. There are at least two web sites of interest: data from http://themis.ssl.berkeley.edu and orbit visualization from SSCWeb at http://sscweb.gsfc.nasa.gov/tipsod. There is a removable attenuator (x50) which ensures that the particle instruments do not saturate in the radiation belt.

Donovan's talk was an overview of the breakout sessions on diffuse aurora which started yesterday and continue this afternoon. Although diffuse aurora is operationally defined as structureless precipitation, the precipitation actually reflects significant turbulence in the central plasma sheet. There are separate electron and ion aurora. On the duskside, the proton aurora is equatorward of the ion aurora, while postmidnight the proton aurora can be poleward of the electron diffuse aurora. The poleward boundary of the 630 nm oxygen line is a proxy for the open-closed field line boundary.