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| INSTITUTET FÖR RYMDFYSIK | UPPSALA |
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| Swedish Institute of Space Physics | (59°50.272′N, 17°38.786′E) |
BSc Project (15 c)/Kandidatprojekt (15 hp)
Satellite Magnetic Conjunctions with Meteor Trails
Student: Isak Bostedt, Uppsala UniversitySupervisor: Anders Eriksson
Period: spring 2025
Abstract
Meteors are small grains of dust from space that decay in the ionosphere and leave a short-lived trail. Because of frictional heating, the meteor increases the conductivity in the ionosphere which increases any electric current flowing along its trail. As the plasma conductivity is high along magnetic field lines, the current propagates upward along the geomagnetic field where a satellite could detect this as a magnetic disturbance. Such an event, when two objects are on the same magnetic fieldline, is known as a magnetic conjunction. For this study, the objects are ESA’s Swarm satellites and meteors observed by meteor cameras and recorded in the EDMOND database. By searching the years of service of the Swarm satellites, we have found 919 such conjunctions within a 5 deg geographic longitudinal and latitudinal tolerance, the closest as near as 9 km. To increase the understanding of meteors and their impact on ionospheric electrodynamics, Swarm data for these events should be investigated in a future continuation of this work.Results
Final report
![[Plot]](isak.png)
Example plot from the report, showing events when meteors (orange dots) occur in the same 5x5 degree box as one of the Swarm satellites, in this case Swarm A, for which the actual position (violet dots) as well as the magnetic footpoint (green dots) are shown. The red dashed line indicates the shortest distance between the meteor and the magnetic field line (blue) passing through the satellite.