The cluster fleet explores waves in the magnetosphere: Chosen illustrations

摘要

The four-point Cluster constellation is designed to explore in 3D, locally and remotely, phenomena critical to the physics of the Earth's magnetosphere. The purpose of this paper is to illustrate the role of this pioneer mission in the field of plasma and radio waves that are of general importance in space plasma and solar terrestrial physics. We have chosen, somewhat arbitrarily, examples in published literature obtained with the four points fleet, with the objective to present a variety rather than a complete panorama of the maj or results obtained up to now. Moreover, the emphasis has been to present which novel features are derived from the four spacecraft observations, rather than how they are changing our views about physical processes shaping our environment. The latter would deserve full developments, but a flavor of it is given in the paper. We describe shortly the multiple point analysis tools that were necessary for deriving the results, referring to bibliography for the interested reader. Let's start with a few words of history.