Geophysical effects on magnetospheric images

The concept of using solar EUV line resonance scattering to image ion populations in the magnetospheric has been studied extensively in the last decade. Global magnetospheric EUV images can display the effects of scatterer density, injection, the geomagnetic field, and the changing perspective of earthshine source intensity with altitude, latitude, and local time. Successful use of these images for magnetospheric plasma diagnostics or for examining the morphology of the magnetosphere depends on properly accounting for these effects and incorporating them into the models used to interpret such images. The importance of each of these effects is examined for varying levels of magnetospheric activity and different observer perspectives. Oxygen 834-angstrom resonance scattering is used a testbed. A Tsyganenko 1987 magnetospheric model is employed to study the effects of different levels of magnetospheric activity. The resonance scattering formulation employed assumes an optically thin magnetospheric medium, with full inclusion of Doppler shift effects, for 834-angstrom radiation; Monte Carlo techniques are used for the construction of simulated magnetospheric images