The Magnetometer (MAG) on the MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging (MESSENGER) mission is a low-noise,
tri-axial, fluxgate instrument with its sensor mounted on a 3.6-m-long boom. The boom was deployed on March 8, 2005. The primary
MAG science objectives are to determine the structure of Mercury’s intrinsic magnetic field and infer its origin. Mariner
10 observations indicate a planetary moment in the range 170 to 350 nT RM3 (where RM is Mercury’s mean radius). The uncertainties in the dipole moment are associated with the Mariner 10 trajectory and variability
of the measured field. By orbiting Mercury, MESSENGER will significantly improve the determination of dipole and higher-order
moments. The latter are essential to understanding the thermal history of the planet. MAG has a coarse range, ±51,300 nT full
scale (1.6-nT resolution), for pre-flight testing, and a fine range, ±1,530 nT full scale (0.047-nT resolution), for Mercury
operation. A magnetic cleanliness program was followed to minimize variable and static spacecraft-generated fields at the
sensor. Observations during and after boom deployment indicate that the fixed residual field is less than a few nT at the
location of the sensor, and initial observations indicate that the variable field is below 0.05 nT at least above about 3 Hz.
Analog signals from the three axes are low-pass filtered (10-Hz cutoff) and sampled simultaneously by three 20-bit analog-to-digital
converters every 50 ms. To accommodate variable telemetry rates, MAG provides 11 output rates from 0.01 s−1 to 20 s−1. Continuous measurement of fluctuations is provided with a digital 1–10 Hz bandpass filter. This fluctuation level is used
to trigger high-time-resolution sampling in eight-minute segments to record events of interest when continuous high-rate sampling
is not possible. The MAG instrument will provide accurate characterization of the intrinsic planetary field, magnetospheric
structure, and dynamics of Mercury’s solar wind interaction. 相似文献
We have performed the analysis of the magnetic topology of active region NOAA 10486 before two large flares occurring on October 26 and 28, 2003. The 3D extrapolation of the photospheric magnetic field shows the existence of magnetic null points when using two different methods. We use TRACE 1600 Å and 195 Å brightenings as tracers of the energy release due to magnetic reconnections. We conclude on the three following points:
1. The small events observed before the flares are related to low lying null points. They are long lasting and associated with low energy release. They are not triggering the large flares.
2. On October 26, a high altitude null point is found. We look for bright patches that could correspond to the signatures of coronal reconnection at the null point in TRACE 1600 Å images. However, such bright patches are not observed before the main flare, they are only observed after it.
3. On October 28, four ribbons are observed in TRACE images before the X17 flare. We interpret them as due to a magnetic breakout reconnection in a quadrupolar configuration. There is no magnetic null point related to these four ribbons, and this reconnection rather occurs at quasi-separatrix layers (QSLs).
We conclude that the existence of a null point in the corona is neither a sufficient nor a necessary condition to give rise to large flares. 相似文献
The third-order accurate upwind compact difference scheme has been applied for the numerical study of the magnetic reconnection driven by a plasma blob impacting the heliospheric current sheet, under the framework of the two-dimensional compressible magnetohydrodynamics. The results show that the driven reconnection near the current sheet could occur in about 10–30 min for the interplanetary high magnetic Reynolds number, RM = 2000–10,000, a stable magnetic reconnection structure can be formed in hour order of magnitude, and there appear some basic properties such as the multiple X-line reconnections, vortex structures, filament current systems, splitting and collapse of the high-density plasma blob. These results are helpful in understanding and identifying the magnetic reconnection phenomena possibly occurring near the heliospheric current sheets. 相似文献