Distribution and variability of plasma perturbations observed by ARTEMIS near the Moon in the terrestrial magnetotail

Abstract The lunar environment while in the Earth’s magnetosphere represents a unique plasma regime, in which we can directly detect the Moon’s effects on the ambient plasma environment. To a much greater degree than in the solar wind, the presence of the Moon and its exosphere perturb the ambient plasma environment. We identified and analyzed a variety of different effects of this interaction. We mapped four different interaction signatures and analyzed the solar and solar wind parameters during their occurrence. Confirming previous work, we found that the lunar events investigated in this paper tend to occur above the lunar dayside surface. In addition, we found that magnetospheric activity indices are higher during the categorized lunar events. This suggests that when the terrestrial magnetosphere is more active, as a result of solar wind activity, the terrestrial magnetospheric plasma and electromagnetic fields interact with lunar plasma to create the observed perturbations.