Summary of THEMIS observations of magnetopause reconnection

Abstract:

The global spatial extent of magnetopause reconnection has been a topic of discussion for half a century. The five-spacecraft THEMIS mission has been passing through the magnetopause since 2007, and provide many conjunctions where two or more spacecraft cross the magnetopause near simultaneously. This work has generated a database of these conjunction crossings, and is used to estimate the spatial properties of magnetopause reconnection as observed by THEMIS. The work seeks to understand if reconnection is always extended or if it can be localized in spatial extent. We present a statistical analysis of years of THEMIS magnetopause conjunction measurements, providing X-line observations ranging from fractions of Re to more than 10 Re. These results will add to the discussion regarding the spatial scale of reconnection at the magnetopause.