Iterative inversion of global magnetospheric information from energy neutral atom (ENA) images recorded by the TC-2/NUADU instrument

A method is presented for retrieving the magnetospheric ion distribution from Energetic Neutral Atom (ENA) measurements made by the NUADU instrument on the TC-2 spacecraft. Based on the already well-established method of constrained linear inversion, an iterance technique suitable for the low count ENA measurements has been developed which is tolerant of the noise background. By the iterance technique, it is possible for the first time to simultaneously retrieve the magnetospheric ion distribution and the exospheric neutral density, and further to recover global ENA emissions in three dimensions. The technique is applied to a representative ENA image recorded in energy channel 2 (protons: 50-81 keV) of the NUADU instrument during a major geomagnetic storm and it is, thereby, shown that the retrieval method developed provides a useful tool for extracting ion distribution information from ENA data.