Friday, October 04, 2024 - 3 p.m. to 4 p.m.
DeMeritt Hall - Rm. 240
Title: "A big picture perspective of solar wind - magnetosphere coupling"
Presenter: Brian Walsh, Associate Professor – Mechanical Engineering, Boston University
Host: Francois Foucart - Associate Professor - Physics & Astronomy Department - UNH
Abstract:
The dynamics inside planetary magnetosphere’s are driven, in most cases, by coupling between a planetary environment and a stellar wind. At Earth, solar wind-magnetosphere coupling has been the focus of study for decades. Although recent space missions have unlocked many secrets of micro-scale physics at this boundary, a system level understanding of our space environment remains outside the field-of-view of current spacecraft constellations and imagers. This talk explores the use of soft X-ray emissions from charge-exchange as a tool to drastically expand our experimental field-of-view. Currently several missions are in development to study these large-scale magnetosphere dynamics using novel wide field-of-view soft X-ray imagers. This talk will provide a tour of this advancing technology and its use in developing projects such the LEXI telescope traveling to the lunar surface in 2024 and the SMILE mission launching in 2025.
