Reconnection: Solar Wind Breaches the Earth's Magnetic Shield
The Far Ultraviolet camera aboard the IMAGE spacecraft captured this view of a proton aurora (the bright spot near the center of the view) as well as the ring of the electron aurora. The protons for this aurora came from the incoming solar wind. They made it though the Earth's magnetic shield in a magnetic reconnection event higher in the magnetosphere which was detected by the Cluster satellite. Note: A 'corner' appears in the data in the beginning as the IMAGE spacecraft moves into a position where it can view the entire north polar region.
A movie of the IMAGE-FUV view of the aurora, re-projected onto the Earth's polar cap.
A bright moment for the proton aurora - the bright spot near the center.
The proton aurora begins to fade.
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Credits
Please give credit for this item to:
NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center
Scientific Visualization Studio
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Animator
- Tom Bridgman (Global Science and Technology, Inc.)
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Scientists
- Harald Frey (University of California at Berkeley)
- Tai Phan (University of California at Berkeley)
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Writer
- William Steigerwald (NASA/GSFC)
Release date
This page was originally published on Thursday, December 4, 2003.
This page was last updated on Wednesday, May 3, 2023 at 1:56 PM EDT.
Missions
This visualization is related to the following missions:Series
This visualization can be found in the following series:Datasets used in this visualization
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[IMAGE: FUV]
ID: 42
Note: While we identify the data sets used in these visualizations, we do not store any further details, nor the data sets themselves on our site.