STRUCTURE OF THE SUBSOLAR MAGNETOPAUSE ON NOVEMBER 1, 1978, 1510-1530-UT - AN EFFECT OF RECONNECTION

The terrestrial magnetopause region shows a big variety of different s tructures and properties depending on different situations, mainly in the free solar wind. In a recent paper, Song et al. (1993) reported a multi-instrument study on magnetopause parameters on November 1, 1978, 1510-1530 UT. We complement this descriptive study by examining this event in terms of a reconnection model. For doing this we, use a shock -type reconnection model which allows for magnetic fields of arbitrary strength and skew and for arbitrary plasma flows on either side of th e reconnection layer as well as for different densities. Thus we are a ble to model the magnetopause structure within a big parameter regime. We show that the entire sequence of regions and discontinuities detec ted on November 1, 1978, 1510-1530 UT, and reported by Song et al. (19 93) agrees with the magnetopause. structure predicted by our reconnect ion model. However, we point out that some features of the. data need additional assumptions, which make the problem open for future. study.