Charm City Science #4

This image was created by Dr. Erik Vandegriff, a postdoctoral researcher at the NASA Goddard Space Flight center. It is a snapshot of single time step of a computer simulation of Earth's magnetic field. It captures a side-view slice of the magnetic field lines surrounding Earth during a solar storm. The x-axis (horizontal) and z-axis (vertical) are defined by a coordinate system where positive x points toward the sun, and positive z points north. The white semicircle also indicates the side of the Earth that is pointed toward the sun. The larger grey circle shows the limits of this region of the simulation - closer to Earth, the dynamics change and we use different equations to simulate it. Each unit of x and z is equal to Earth’s radius (RE), so this particular graphic shows magnetic field lines out to 50 Earth radii in the direction that the solar wind is blowing.