The Earth's Plasmasphere: A CLUSTER and IMAGE Perspective

The Earth's plasmasphere, discovered at the beginning of the space age, has remained largely unexplored territory. Now, with the innovative observational techniques employed by ESA's CLUSTER and NASA's IMAGE spacecraft, new light is being shed on this key region of the magnetosphere. This book reviews the state of the art in plasmaspheric science based on these modern observations. It sketches the emerging overall picture of a highly structured plasma, sculpted by the ever-changing electromagnetic fields that result from the interaction of the solar wind with the magnetosphere.