THE COMPTON-GETTING EFFECT FOR LOW ENERGY PARTICLES

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 the Univ. of Maryland experiment on IMP-7 on 31 October 1972.