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Kelvin-Helmholtz Vortices


Date: 05 December 2006
Satellite: Cluster
Depicts: Kelvin-Helmholtz vortices in Earth's magnetosphere
Copyright: Adapted by ESA from [Hasegawa et al., 2004]

This figure shows a three-dimensional cut-away view of Earth's magnetic bubble called the magnetosphere. The curly features sketched on the boundary layer are the Kelvin-Helmholtz vortices on the dawnside of the magnetosphere discovered by Cluster [Nykyri et al., 2006]. They originate where two adjacent flows travel with different speed. In this case, one of the flows is the heated gas inside the boundary layer of the magnetosphere, the other the solar wind just outside it. The black dashed arrow shows the trajectory followed by Cluster.
Last Update: 1 September 2019
12-Apr-2026 01:10 UT

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