Beam tracking strategies for fast acquisition of solar wind velocity distribution functions with high energy and angular resolutions - figures and movies - Figures and movies

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This file contains the figures from the publication, together with corresponding movies.

Figure1.pdf, Figure1.mp4

Plasma spectrometer measurements of a constant Maxwellian solar wind beam on a rapidly spinning spacecraft using internal energy and elevation beam tracking. From top to bottom: the energy spectrum of the Maxwellian solar wind; the energy spectrum as acquired by the plasma spectrometer at t = 3.95 s with the vertical black and green dashed lines indicating the centre and the bounds of the sampled energy range; the energy as a function of time, where the horizontal blue line represents the true solar wind value, the small red dots are the Faraday cup measurements every 30 ms (not used with internal beam tracking), the magenta circles and triangles indicate the centre and the bounds of the sampled energy range, and the red diamonds give the mean energy as determined by the plasma spectrometer; the azimuth (same format, no beam tracking for azimuth); the elevation (same format); and the spin phase. The panels at the right hand side show the energy–elevation, energy–azimuth, and azimuth–elevation projections of the VDF at t = 3.95 s. See the main text for more details.

Figure2.pdf

Plasma spectrometer measurements of a constant Maxwellian solar wind beam on a spinning spacecraft using internal energy and elevation beam tracking. The plot shows the maximum deviations ∆α and ∆θ between the spectrometer’s mean azimuth and elevation and the solar wind azimuth and elevation as a function of the spacecraft spin period tspin.

Figure3.pdf, Figure3.mp4

Plasma spectrometer measurements of a constant solar wind beam from a spacecraft with spin period tspin = 0:25 s. The plot layout is the same as that of Fig. 1.

Figure4.pdf, Figure4.mp4

Plasma spectrometer measurements during the passage of a gradual plasma discontinuity (duration 500 ms) using internal energy and elevation beam tracking. The plot layout is the same as that of Fig. 1.

Figure5.pdf, Figure5.mp4

Plasma spectrometer measurements during the passage of an abrupt plasma discontinuity (duration 50 ms) using internal energy and elevation beam tracking. The plot layout is the same as that of Fig. 1.

Figure6.pdf

Plasma spectrometer measurements during the passage of a plasma discontinuity. The spectrometer uses internal energy and elevation beam tracking. The plot shows the occurrence of beam loss (true or false) and the maximum deviations in plasma density, energy, azimuth, and elevation between the measured values and the true solar wind values that occur throughout the passage, as a function of the discontinuity crossing duration tdisc. The measurements are more accurate as the plasma property changes associated with the discontinuity occur over a longer time scale.

Figure7.pdf, Figure7-part1.mp4, Figure7-part2.mp4

Plasma spectrometer measurements for a solar wind simulation based on BMSW on Spektr-R observations on 2014-06-08, using internal energy and elevation beam tracking. The plot layout is the same as that of Fig. 1, but also shows density, velocity in the spacecraft frame of reference (x axis pointing to the Sun, spacecraft spinning in the x–y plane), and temperature, as a function of time.

Figure8.pdf, Figure8-part1.mp4, Figure8-part2.mp4

Plasma spectrometer measurements for a solar wind simulation based on BMSW on Spektr-R observations of a strong shock on 2015-06-22, using internal energy and elevation beam tracking. The plot layout is the same as that of Fig. 7.

Figure9.pdf, Figure9-part1.mp4, Figure9-part2.mp4

Plasma spectrometer measurements for a solar wind simulation with the same data as Fig. 8, using external energy beam tracking with a delay of 30 ms. The plot layout is the same.

Figures and movies