OBSERVATION OF SOLAR WIND CHARGE EXCHANGE EMISSION FROM EXOSPHERIC MATERIAL IN AND OUTSIDE EARTH'S MAGNETOSHEATH 2008 SEPTEMBER 25

A long XMM-Newton exposure is used to observe solar wind charge exchange (SWCX) emission from exospheric material in and outside Earth s magnetosheath. The light curve of the O VII (0.5-0.62 keV) band is compared with a model for the expected emission, and while the emission is faint and the light curve has considerable scatter, the correlation is significant to better than 99.9%. This result demonstrates the validity of the geocoronal SWCX emission model for predicting a contribution to astrophysical observations to a scale factor of order unity (1.36). The results also demonstrate the potential utility of using X-ray observations to study global phenomena of the magnetosheath which currently are only investigated using in situ measurements.

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