Earth's Radiation Belts

Under the wave of energetic particles from the Halloween 2003 solar storm events, the Earth's radiation belts underwent significant changes in structure. This visualization is constructed using daily-averaged particle flux data from the SAMPEX satellite installed in a simple dipole model for the Earth's magnetic field. The color-scale on the cross section is violet for low flux and white for high flux. The translucent grey arcs represent the fields lines of the Earth's dipole field.