IMAGE/HENA: pressure and current distributions during the 1 October 2002 storm Original Research Article

Global energetic neutral atom images (ENA) of the Earth’s ring current can be used to derive the global ion and pressure distribution by applying a constrained linear inversion technique. The ENA images are obtained in the 10–60 keV range by the high energy neutral atom (HENA) onboard the IMAGE spacecraft. We present ion and pressure distributions from the 1 October 2002 storm main phase. The typical storm main phase displays a pressure peak around midnight at L=3−4. We use this pressure distribution to compute the three-dimensional electrical current system. The computed current system is then compared to the region 2 current system obtained by the magnetometers on board the Indium spacecraft.