Rumi Nakamura | |
---|---|
Alma mater | University of Tokyo (BSc, PhD) |
Known for | Solar – terrestrial interactions |
Scientific career | |
Institutions | National Institute of Polar Research Goddard Space Flight Center Austrian Academy of Sciences Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics |
Rumi Nakamura is an Earth scientist at the Austrian Academy of Sciences. She works on solar-terrestrial interactions, with a particular focus on the terrestrial magnetosphere. Nakamura won the 2014 European Geosciences Union Julius Bartels Medal.
Nakamura grew up in Japan. Her father was a nuclear physicist. She accompanied him on a research project in Munich, and started elementary school in Germany. Nakamura learned German at the Goethe-Institut. Nakamura studied physics at the University of Tokyo, and earned a master's degree in 1987. During university she completed an internship with a Professor who worked on aurora. After her degree, she noticed that the male students in her class were receiving more job offers. [1] She recognised that a bachelor's degree would not be enough for her, so applied for postgraduate diplomas. Nakamura spent two semesters in Munich before returning to the University of Tokyo for her doctoral studies, working on aurora dynamics associated with magnetospheric substorms. These included pseduobreakup and major expansion onset storms. [2]
After earning her PhD, Nakamura moved to the National Institute of Polar Research where she worked as a research associate. At the time she was told that it was too early for women to go to the Antarctic. [1] She joined the Goddard Space Flight Center in 1991, and wanted to become an astronaut. Nakamura says that her "problem was that I did not have such good teeth". [1]
Nakamura was appointed an assistant professor with tenure at Nagoya University. [3] She moved to the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics as a Senior Scientist in 1998. [3] In 2001 Nakamura has served as the leader of the Space Research Institute at the Austrian Academy of Sciences. [3] Here she works on plasma physics based on analysis from satellites. [4] She was the first woman to be awarded the European Geosciences Union Julius Bartels Medal. [5]
Her research considers plasma flow and the configuration of the electromagnetic field in the magnetotail during substorms. She used data from the Geotail, Cluster II, THEMIS and Double Star missions to confirm that the earthward moving fast flows of the plasma sheet are bubbles of low density plasma that is accompanied by depolarization fronts. [5] [6] [7] Nakamura investigated the shape and size of these fronts, and showed that field aligned currents flow into and out of the ionosphere at their meridional flanks. [5] Nakamura works on the European Space Agency Cluster program, which was launched in 2000. The satellites are designed to study geomagnetic storms and how they impact the Earth's magnetic field. There are four satellites which investigate the storms from different angles.
In astronomy and planetary science, a magnetosphere is a region of space surrounding an astronomical object in which charged particles are affected by that object's magnetic field. It is created by a celestial body with an active interior dynamo.
An aurora , also commonly known as the northern lights or southern lights, is a natural light display in Earth's sky, predominantly seen in high-latitude regions. Auroras display dynamic patterns of brilliant lights that appear as curtains, rays, spirals, or dynamic flickers covering the entire sky.
The magnetosheath is the region of space between the magnetopause and the bow shock of a planet's magnetosphere. The regularly organized magnetic field generated by the planet becomes weak and irregular in the magnetosheath due to interaction with the incoming solar wind, and is incapable of fully deflecting the highly charged particles. The density of the particles in this region is considerably lower than what is found beyond the bow shock, but greater than within the magnetopause, and can be considered a transitory state.
Cluster II is a space mission of the European Space Agency, with NASA participation, to study the Earth's magnetosphere over the course of nearly two solar cycles. The mission is composed of four identical spacecraft flying in a tetrahedral formation. As a replacement for the original Cluster spacecraft which were lost in a launch failure in 1996, the four Cluster II spacecraft were successfully launched in pairs in July and August 2000 onboard two Soyuz-Fregat rockets from Baikonur, Kazakhstan. In February 2011, Cluster II celebrated 10 years of successful scientific operations in space. In February 2021, Cluster II celebrated 20 years of successful scientific operations in space. As of March 2023, its mission has been extended until September 2024. The China National Space Administration/ESA Double Star mission operated alongside Cluster II from 2004 to 2007.
A Birkeland current is a set of electrical currents that flow along geomagnetic field lines connecting the Earth's magnetosphere to the Earth's high latitude ionosphere. In the Earth's magnetosphere, the currents are driven by the solar wind and interplanetary magnetic field and by bulk motions of plasma through the magnetosphere. The strength of the Birkeland currents changes with activity in the magnetosphere. Small scale variations in the upward current sheets accelerate magnetospheric electrons which, when they reach the upper atmosphere, create the Auroras Borealis and Australis. In the high latitude ionosphere, the Birkeland currents close through the region of the auroral electrojet, which flows perpendicular to the local magnetic field in the ionosphere. The Birkeland currents occur in two pairs of field-aligned current sheets. One pair extends from noon through the dusk sector to the midnight sector. The other pair extends from noon through the dawn sector to the midnight sector. The sheet on the high latitude side of the auroral zone is referred to as the Region 1 current sheet and the sheet on the low latitude side is referred to as the Region 2 current sheet.
Time History of Events and Macroscale Interactions during Substorms (THEMIS) mission began in February 2007 as a constellation of five NASA satellites to study energy releases from Earth's magnetosphere known as substorms, magnetic phenomena that intensify auroras near Earth's poles. The name of the mission is an acronym alluding to the Titan Themis.
Geotail was a satellite that observed the Earth's magnetosphere. It was developed by Japan's ISAS in association with the United States' NASA, and was launched by a Delta II rocket on 24 July 1992 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.
The Global Geospace Science (GGS) Polar satellite was a NASA science spacecraft designed to study the polar magnetosphere and aurorae. It was launched into orbit in February 1996, and continued operations until the program was terminated in April 2008. The spacecraft remains in orbit, though it is now inactive. Polar is the sister ship to GGS Wind.
Vassilis Angelopoulos is a Greek American physicist. He is a specialist on space and astrophysical plasmas.
A substorm, sometimes referred to as a magnetospheric substorm or an auroral substorm, is a brief disturbance in the Earth's magnetosphere that causes energy to be released from the "tail" of the magnetosphere and injected into the high latitude ionosphere. Visually, a substorm is seen as a sudden brightening and increased movement of auroral arcs. Substorms were first described in qualitative terms by Kristian Birkeland which he called polar elementary storms. Sydney Chapman used the term substorm about 1960 which is now the standard term. The morphology of aurora during a substorm was first described by Syun-Ichi Akasofu in 1964 using data collected during the International Geophysical Year.
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Tuija I. Pulkkinen is a Finnish space physicist. Her primary research foci are studying the energy flow from the solar wind to the near-Earth space environment and the energy dissipation processes in the magnetosphere.
Wen Li is a space physicist at Boston University. Her research interests include space plasma waves, Earth's radiation belt physics, solar-wind magnetosphere coupling, energetic particle precipitation, and Jovian magnetosphere and aurora: She is a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union.
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