| AU | Astronomical Unit: the mean distance from the Earth to the Sun. |
| BATSE | Burst And Transient Source Experiment: a gamma ray detector on the |
| CGRO. | |
| BS | Bow Shock |
| CAM-CL | Current Advance Method - Cyclic Leapfrog: the hybrid simulation |
| algorithm described in Chapter 3. | |
| CGRO | Compton Gamma Ray Observatory: an Earth orbiting spacecraft. |
| CHEEP | Computer for Highly Economical Enhanced Processing: our prototype |
| Beowulf cluster. | |
| CME | Coronal Mass Ejection |
| COTS | Commodity Off The Shelf: a term used to describe the use of |
| components in Beowulf clusters that are cheap and readily available. | |
| DC | Direct Current |
| DPF | Downstream Plasma Frame |
| EUV | Extreme Ultraviolet |
| FT | Fourier Transform |
| GOES | Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite |
| GRS | Gamma Ray Spectrometer: an instrument on Yohkoh. |
| HTF | de Hoffman-Teller Plasma Frame |
| HXR | Hard X-Rays |
| HXS | Hard X-ray Spectrometer: an instrument on Yohkoh. |
| HXT | Hard X-ray Telescope: an instrument on Yohkoh. |
| IPF | Initial Plasma Frame |
| ISEE | International Sun-Earth Explorer |
| LDE | Long Duration (X-ray) Event |
| MHD | Magnetohydrodynamics |
| MP | Magnetopause |
| MPI | Message Passing Interface: a definition for a programming library that |
| passes information within parallel codes. | |
| NIF | Normal Incidence Frame |
| PC | Personal Computer |
| PIC | Particle In Cell: a type of particle simulation algorithm. |
| POSIX | Portable Operating System Interface |
| PVM | Parallel Virtual Machine: a programming library with similar aims and |
| functionality to MPI. | |
| SLAMS | Short Large Amplitude Magnetic Structures |
| SMM | Solar Maximum Mission |
| SOC | Self Organised Criticality |
| SOHO | SOlar and Heliospheric Observatory: a solar observatory orbiting |
| the Earth-Sun Lagrange point. | |
| SXR | Soft X-Rays |
| SXS | Soft X-ray Spectrometer: an instrument on Yohkoh. |
| SXT | Soft X-ray Telescope: an instrument on Yohkoh. |
| UV | Ultraviolet |