Multispacecraft Observations of Solar Wind Gradients Near L1: VHO Case Studies

The Virtual Heliospheric Observatory (VHO) will be demonstrated as a powerful scientific tool to identify interesting spacecraft configurations of the near-Earth L1 fleet. In particular, solar wind plasma and interplanetary magnetic field gradient investigations will be used to demonstrate the utility of the VHO data query capability. VHO is particularly useful to identify time periods of extreme solar wind conditions of either very low or high solar wind densities or velocities. It will be demonstrated that identified periods of steady solar wind conditions are very useful for in-flight calibration of the various in-situ instruments.