Nancy Crooker
Research Professor Emerita
Astronomy
Boston University
United States of America
Biography
Professor Nancy Crooker works in the area of heliospheric and solar-terrestrial physics, with particular interests in coronal mass ejections, the hurricanes of space, in the structure of the heliospheric current sheet, a global boundary which separates magnetic fields of opposite polarity, and in the magnetic flux budget of the heliosphere, which waxes and wanes with the 11-year sunspot cycle. She leads an effort supported by NASA and NSF to determine the magnetic topology of heliospheric structures using in situ electron and magnetic field data from a number of spacecraft. She is best known for developing the concept of antiparallel merging, a process of coupling between the solar wind and the magnetosphere, for revealing the extent to which the solar wind consists of transient as opposed to steady-state structures, and for the central role coronal mass ejections play in governing the magnetic flux in the heliosphere.
Research Interest
Solar wind, space weather, and solar wind – magnetosphere coupling.
Publications
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Owens MJ, Crooker NU, Schwadron NA, Horbury TS, Yashiro S, Xie H, St Cyr OC, Gopalswamy N. Conservation of open solar magnetic flux and the floor in the heliospheric magnetic field. Geophysical Research Letters. 2008 Oct 1;35(20).
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Richardson JD, Richardson IG, Kasper JC, Cane HV, Crooker NU, Lazarus AJ. Helium variation in the solar wind. InSolar Variability as an Input to the Earths Environment 2003 Sep (Vol. 535, pp. 521-526).
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Crooker NU. Highâ€time resolution of the lowâ€latitude asymmetric disturbance in the geomagnetic field. Journal of Geophysical Research. 1972 Feb 1;77(4):773-5.
