Earth's Magnetosphere

Wayne Keith obtained a PhD in Space Physics from Rice University, during which time he also completed research at Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. He became a research associate at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center before moving on to full time teaching at McMurry University. He participated in the design, assembly, testing, calibration, data processing, and analysis of two magnetospheric plasma instruments (MEDUSA on Astrid-2, and MEDUSA-2 on Munin) and was also involved in data processing and analysis for multiple instruments on Cluster-2. His primary research interests are the magnetospheric cusps and data visualization. Walter Heikkila is Professor Emeritus in the Physics Department at the University of Texas at Dallas. His research interests include space physics and solar physics, specifically magnetospheric physics, solar wind, and auroral substorms. He received his PhD in Low Temperature Physics from the University of Toronto. He has since worked for the Defence Research Telecommunications Establishment, before becoming Associate Professor of Physics at the Southwest Center for Advanced Studies and subsequently Professor of Physics at University of Texas at Dallas. He is the author of the first edition of Earth’s Magnetosphere and a leading expert on the Earth’s magnetic field.

1. Historical introduction2. Kirchhoff’s Laws3. Helmholtz’s theorem4. Magnetohydrodynamic equations5. Poynting’s energy conservation theorem6. Magnetopause7. High-altitude cusps8. Inner Magnetosphere9. Low-latitude boundary layer10. Driving the plasma sheet11. Magnetospheric substorms12. Epilogue