The Ring Current
Date: 28 July 2005
Satellite: IMAGE (NASA)
Depicts: Image of the ring current by the HENA instrument
Copyright: NASA
Image of a portion of the Ring Current with Earth superimposed. The image was taken by the High Energy Neutral Atom (HENA) imager on board onboard the NASA IMAGE spacecraft.
The current is not smooth, and often does not completely encircle the equatorial zone of Earth. It is more prominent on the night time side (right in this figure), and as it moves into the dayside it breaks up and vanishes, possibly by losing particles into the magnetopause region.
Last Update: 1 September 2019
