The Sun ejects a stream of charged particles into space that have to flow around planets like Venus. We quantify how this flow varies with spatial location using spacecraft measurements of the particles and magnetic field taken over several years. We find that this flow is connected to interactions with the heavier charged particles that originate from Venus’ upper atmosphere. These interactions are not unique to Venus, so we compare our results to similar studies at Mars.

In this study, we use a multipoint analysis of conjugate magnetospheric and ionospheric observations to investigate the magnetospheric and ionospheric responses to fast flow bursts that are associated with different space weather conditions. The results show that ionospheric currents are connected to the magnetospheric flows for different space weather conditions. The connection is more apparent and global for flows that are associated with a geomagnetically active condition.

We develop an automatic procedure based on the two criteria of the Wang-Pan method, and it consists of three parts: selection of the potentially high Alfvénic fluctuation events, evaluation of the OOLs, and determination of the zero offset. We test our automatic procedure by using three months of the partially calibrated data measured by VEX FGM, and find that our automatic procedure is successful to achieve as good results as the Davis-Smith method.

We investigate the reflection of magnetosonic (MS) waves at the local two-ion cutoff frequency in the outer plasmasphere, which is rarely reported. The observed wave signals demonstrate the reflection at the local two-ion cutoff frequency. From simulations, the waves with small incident angles are more likely to penetrate the thin layer where the group velocity reduces significantly before reflection. These results may help to predict the global distribution of MS waves.

Currents are believed to exist in mirror-mode structures and to be self-consistent with the magnetic field depression. Bipolar currents are found in two ion-scale magnetic dips. The bipolar current in a small-size magnetic dip is mainly contributed by electron velocities, which is mainly formed by the magnetic gradient–curvature drift. For another large-size magnetic dip, the bipolar current is mainly caused by an ion bipolar velocity, which can be explained by the ion drift motions.