Tag: EISCAT

C.A.T. Scans of the Solar Wind

Guest article by Dr. Mario M. Bisi (Research Focus)

A cut in the ecliptic plane through a 3D reconstruction on 08 November 2004 at 0000 UT using white-light data from SMEI. The view is from directly North of the ecliptic; the Sun is at the centre marked by a +, the Earth is on the right marked with a ⊕ along with its orbit as a black near-circular line around the Sun (the Earth orbits anti-clockwise around the Sun from this point of view). The darker the colour, the greater the density of material in the ecliptic. (©Dr. Mario M. Bisi)
A cut in the ecliptic plane through a 3D reconstruction on 08 November 2004 at 0000 UT using white-light data from SMEI. The view is from directly North of the ecliptic; the Sun is at the centre marked by a +, the Earth is on the right marked with a ⊕ along with its orbit as a black near-circular line around the Sun (the Earth orbits anti-clockwise around the Sun from this point of view). The darker the colour, the greater the density of material in the ecliptic. (©Dr. Mario M. Bisi)

The Computer Assisted Tomography (C.A.T.) technique has been used for many years now and is well known for use on people where certain health conditions need more thorough, detailed, and deeper scans into the human body and the need for three-dimensional (3D) reconstructed imaging. However, similar such scans can also be used on the solar wind to discover the shapes and sizes of structures near Earth and throughout the inner heliosphere in three dimensions. These scans have been carried out for some time, pioneered in the most part by those at the Center for Astrophysics and Space Sciences (CASS), University of California, San Diego (UCSD) in La Jolla, CA, U.S.A. in close-collaboration with the Solar-Terrestrial Environment Laboratory (STELab), Nagoya University, Toyokawa, Japan…
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