The Compton-Getting effect for low energy particles

Abstract

The traditional first-order Compton-Getting effect, which relates particle distributions as observed in two frames of reference moving with constant relative velocity, is inadequate for the description of low-energy particles (less than a few hundred keV/nucleon) in the solar system. An exact procedure is given for recovering both isotropic and anisotropic distributions in the solar wind frame from observations made in a spacecraft frame. The method is illustrated by analyzing a particle event observed by an experiment on IMP-7 on Oct. 31, 1972.