Estimation of magnetic field mapping accuracy using the pulsating aurora-chorus connection

Although magnetic field models are widely used in magnetosphere‐ionosphere coupling studies to perform field‐line mapping, their accuracy has been difficult to estimate experimentally. Taking advantage of the high correlation between lower‐band chorus and pulsating aurora, we located the THEMIS spacecraft footprint within ∼km accuracy and calculated the differences from mappings given in widely‐used Tsyganenko models. Using 13 conjunctions of the THEMIS spacecraft and ground‐based imagers, we found that the Tsyganenko model footprints were located within 1°–2° magnetic latitude and 0.1–0.2 h magnetic local time of our derived footprint. The deviation between the footprints has a consistent dependence on geomagnetic activity. Our results showed that the real magnetic field tends to be less stretched than that in the Tsyganenko models during quiet times and comparable to or more stretched during disturbed times. This approach can be used to advance modeling of field lines that connect to the near‐Earth plasma sheet. Key Points THEMIS spacecraft footprint was located using chorus and aurora correlation Differences from mappings given in Tsyganenko models were investigated Geomagnetic activity dependence of the difference from the models was found