Calculating Plasma Moments from Spacecraft Data: Cassini
Date:
Abstract: A tutorial style presentation on calculating plasma moments from spacecraft data for the London Space Plasma Meeting at Queen Mary University of London.
The tutorial begins by explaining the background about distribution functions and phase space, followed by the macroscopic quantities that can be calculated from taking moments of the distribution function.
The tutorial then goes on to introduce the limitations of the Cassini instruments, and explain the assumptions needed to calculate plasma moments for electrons. The assumptions touch on the concept of plasma corotation with the planet and isotropic distributions.
Finally, the tutorial gives a worked example of how to calculate moments from Cassini plasma data obtained by the CAPS/ELS instrument, and an example plot of the electron number density and temperature.
The slides being presented can be found here.
