C. A. Cattell, A. Bowser, K. Sigsbee (School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN 55455)
C. A. Cattell, A. Bowser, K. Sigsbee
(School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN 55455)
C. W. Carlson, R. E. Ergun, J. P. McFadden, F. Mozer, W. Peria (Space Sciences Laboratory, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720)
R. C. Elphic (Space and Atmospheric Sciences, Los Alamos National Lab, Los Alamos, NM 87545)
R. J. Strangeway, C. Russell, G. Le (Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90024)
The CME event of January 6 - 11, 1997 has been the subject of
intensive study. In this talk, we will
describe the evolution of field-aligned currents and
convection electric fields observed by the FAST
satellite during this event. FAST was in a noon-midnight
orbit and, therefore, in a good local time
sector to observe changes in the current system and
polar cap boundary locations associated with the
variations in the solar wind conditions . Dramatic
variations in the intensity and structure of the
currents and the electric field were observed. The
low altitude FAST results will be compared with the
low altitude Polar observations of currents (Le
et al., GRL, in press, 1998), as well as high altitude
Polar observations of currents, and Polar observations
of the convection electric field. The significance
of the observations to our understanding of the dynamics
of the magnetosphere and solar wind-magnetospheric
coupling during this event will be discussed.