BALLOON-VIKING DATA ANALYSIS

1986年7月的北欧海盗气球运动是一项国际合作努力，其目标是利用地面、气球和航天器的相关测量来进一步了解极光和相关的磁层过程。这次活动产生了许多补充仪器提供的大量数据，为从几个不同的角度研究极光过程提供了机会，从全球范围到非常局部的现象，涉及许多相关参数--高能和低能粒子以及电场和磁场--来自差异很大的空间区域。已经从数据中获得了初步结果，这些结果表明脉动极光的有趣结构。这笔赠款将支持对这一广泛的数据集的分析，该数据集在许多磁层-极光问题方面具有巨大的潜力。极光的动力学可以从几个不同的区域进行研究，每个区域都有其特有的长度和时间尺度。极轨卫星和火箭实验具有就地测量当地等离子体参数的优势，但轨道运动的限制阻碍了许多此类实验(特别是火箭和低空航天器)在长时间尺度上进行测量。此外，由于收集数据的地点单一，在区分空间效应和时间效应方面总是存在固有的模糊性。极光椭圆形和极冠的卫星成像是一个强大的工具，但并不总是完全阐明极光弧内发生的小尺度动力学。然而，气球携带的仪器能够检测极光现象的较长时间尺度行为，因为气球的运动通常比许多典型的极光时间尺度慢得多。此外，时空模糊可以通过使用成像技术和多点测量来进行去卷积。这些成像技术允许在短短几秒钟内检查数量级为数十公里的结构。这是海盗号-气球项目的总体理念；利用气球的X射线成像作为一种工具，了解时间和长度尺度上的极地电离层-磁层动力学，并将这些测量结果与极地轨道航天器的数据相关联。瑞典空间公司的维京号卫星提供了进行这项实验的机会。华盛顿大学将继续对北欧海盗气球运动期间获得的数据进行处理和科学分析，并利用北欧海盗气球数据参加与极光和磁层动力学国际小组的协调研究。

The Viking-Balloon campaign in July 1986 was an international collaborative effort and its goal was to utilize correlative measurements from ground, balloon, and space-craft to further understand aurora and the associated magnetospheric processes. The campaign resulted in a wealth of data from many complementary instruments providing an opportunity to study auroral processes from several different perspectives, from global scale to very localized phenomena, involving many relevant parameters - high and low energy particles and electric and magnetic fields - from widely varying regions of space. Preliminary results from the data have already been obtained which indicate interesting structure to pulsating aurora. This grant will support analysis of this extensive data set which has tremendous potential with regard to many magnetospheric-auroral problems. The dynamics of the aurora can be studied from several different regimes, each one distinguished by its characteristic length and time scales. Polar orbiting satellites and rocket experiments have the advantage of making in situ measurements of the local plasma parameters, however the constraints of orbital motion prevent many of these experiments (in particular, rockets and low altitude spacecraft) from making measurements over long time scales. Furthermore there is always an inherent ambiguity in separating spatial effect from temporal effects, due to the single point from which the data is gathered. Satellite imaging of the auroral oval and the polar cap is a powerful tool, but does not always fully elucidate the small scale dynamics occurring within an auroral arc. Balloon borne instruments, however, are able to examine the longer time scale behavior of auroral phenomena, since the balloon's motion is usually much slower than many typical auroral time scales. Furthermore, the space-time ambiguity can be deconvolved by the use of imaging techniques, and multiple point measurements. These imaging techniques allow an examination of structures of scale lengths of order tens of kilometers in as short as a few seconds. This was the general philosophy in the Viking-balloons project; to employ X-ray imaging from a balloon as a tool to understand Polar Ionospheric-Magnetospheric dynamics on time and length scales which are not easily obtainable by other means, and to correlate these measurements to data from a polar orbiting space craft. The Viking satellite from the Swedish Space Corporation provided an opportunity to carry out this experiment. The University of Washington will continue processing and scientific analysis of data obtained during the Viking balloon campaign and take part in coordinated studies with the international group in auroral and magnetospheric dynamics using the Viking-balloon data.