Magnetic decreases are often observed in various regions of interplanetary space. Many studies are devoted to reveal the physical nature and generation mechanism of the magnetic decreases, but still we do not fully understand magnetic decreases. In this study, we investigate the structure of a magnetic decrease observed in a corotating interaction region using multi-spacecraft measurements. We use three spacecraft, ACE, Cluster, and Wind, which were widely separated in the x- and y-directions in the geocentric solar ecliptic (GSE) coordinates. The boundaries of the magnetic decrease are the same at the three locations and can be identified as tangential discontinuities. A notable feature is that the magnetic decrease has very large dimension, &268 RE, along the boundary, which is much larger than the size, 6 RE, along the normal direction. This suggests that the magnetic decrease has a shape of a long, thin rod or a wide slab.

The numerical simulations associated with the interaction of High Velocity Clouds (HVC) with the Magnetized Galactic Interstellar Medium (ISM) are a powerful tool to describe the evolution of the interaction of these objects in our Galaxy. In this work we present a new project referred to as Theoretical Virtual i Observatories. It is oriented toward to perform numerical simulations in real time through a Web page. This is a powerful astrophysical computational tool that consists of an intuitive graphical user interface (GUI) and a database produced by numerical calculations. In this Website the user can make use of the existing numerical simulations from the database or run a new simulation introducing initial conditions such as temperatures, densities, velocities, and magnetic field intensities for both the ISM and HVC. The prototype is programmed using Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP (LAMP), based on the open source philosophy. All simulations were performed with the MHD code ZEUS-3D, which solves the ideal MHD equations by finite differences on a fixed Eulerian mesh. Finally, we present typical results that can be obtained with this tool.

Particle-in-cell simulations were performed to understand the interaction of the solar wind with localized magnetic fields on the sunlit surface of the Moon. The results indicated a mini-magnetosphere was formed which had a thin magnetopause with the thickness of the electron skin depth. It was also found that the solar wind penetrated into the cavity of the magnetosphere intermittently rather than in a steady manner. The solar wind that moved around the magnetosphere was observed to hit the surface of the Moon, implying that it may be the cause of the lunar swirl formation on the surface.