On the Peculiarities of the Registration of Protons of the Inner Belt on Meteor Satellites by Omnidirectional and Narrowly Focused Detectors

The Meteor-M No. 1 and Meteor-M No. 2 satellites were equipped with a group of omnidirectional counters and a group of narrow-field multichannel telescopic instruments. The telescopes were mounted along the satellite’s velocity vector and radially toward the zenith. When passing through the inner belt from the equator to the South Pole, the latitudinal profiles of protons in the channels of the omnidirectional counters and in the channels of telescopes oriented in different directions were arranged one beneath the other. During the pass in the opposite direction, the “omnidirectional” profile approximately maintained its position, while the profiles in the channels of telescopes with different orientations shifted relative to the “omnidirectional” profile in opposite directions. The altitude variation of inner belt protons in the telescope channels is a combination of elements of various shapes. The relative positions of these elements depend on the telescope-axis orientation and the direction of the satellite’s motion. Algorithms and calculation results for telescope-axis orientations relative to the magnetic-field vector are presented. It is shown that the orientation of the telescope axes depends on longitude and the direction of the satellite’s motion. Depending on this, different regions of the particles’ pitch-angle distribution fall within the telescope’s field of view. Based on a simple model of the pitch-angle distribution of proton fluxes in the form of j ≈ sin(α)n, the flux values that can enter the telescope’s field of view were calculated. It was taken into account that part of the telescope’s acceptance cone may lie within the atmospheric loss cone. The results of modeling the latitudinal and altitude variations showed a qualitative agreement with the satellite observations.