Rm. Skoug et al., Radial variation of solar wind electrons inside a magnetic cloud observed at 1 and 5 AU, J GEO R-S P, 105(A12), 2000, pp. 27269-27275
The fortuitous observations of a magnetic cloud during the ACE/Ulysses radi
al alignment in March 1998 provide one of the first opportunities to study
the same magnetic cloud at two different radial distances. In this paper, w
e use data from both ACE and Ulysses to examine the expansion of the cloud
as well as of the adjacent noncloud solar wind. In particular, we study the
evolution of the electrons as the cloud expanded from 1 to 5.4 AU, includi
ng the core, halo, and total electron populations. We find that the core an
d total electron temperatures at either spacecraft are moderately anticorre
lated with electron density. However, combined observations from the two sp
acecraft show that both temperature and density decreased as the cloud expa
nded and thus that single point measurements cannot be used to determine a
polytropic index describing the expansion of solar wind electrons within th
e cloud.