A new published work has just added to our understanding of auroras by explaining how the Theta Aurora is created from the interaction of the charged particles, electric and magnetic fields surrounding the Earth. We were not aware of Thetas until the space age since they cannot be recognized from the ground. The auroras that we see from here on Earth are just arcs and subsets of the bigger picture which is the auroral ovals atop the polar regions of the Earth. Ground based all-sky cameras and polar orbiting probes had seen what were deemed “polar cap arcs.” However, it was a spacecraft Dynamics Explorer I (DE-1) that was the first to make global images of the auroral ovals and observed the first “transpolar arcs”, that is, the Theta aurora. Learn more: universetoday/117503/solved-the-mystery-of-earths-theta-aurora/? ~Kat
Posted on: Sun, 28 Dec 2014 21:15:08 +0000
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