U.S.A. National Committee Report, Fifteenth URSI General Assembly, Munich, September 1966: Commission 4,Magnetospheric Radio; Progress in Magnetospheric Radio

Abstract

It has become clear during the past few years that the magnetosphere has a long open tail trailing out from the earth in the direction away from the sun, much as was predicted by Piddington [1960]. That this was so was recognized by Dessler [1964] on the basis of theoretical considerations and Explorer 10 observations of the geomagnetic field made by Heppner et al. [1963]. Striking verification of this analysis was obtained by Ness [1965] in IMP‐1, as indicated by figure l. An interesting feature of the distorted magnetosphere is the magnetically neutral sheet that separates the oppositely directed magnetic field lines.