Earth  Sun  ID: 3513

Auroral Substorm from Polar

Visualizations by Tom Bridgman Released on July 23, 2008

This movie is an auroral substorm event observed by the visible light camera aboard the Polar spacecraft.

Because the visible light camera records in a single broad range of wavelengths, we do not have color imagery of the event. For this movie we will color the aurora green since that is the dominant color in most cases. The VIS camera is also low resolution so the fine aurora details visible from the ground are not apparent in this movie.

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This movie is an aurora with a substorm event observed by Polar.
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Opening view of the Earth.
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We move in close to the polar regions and see the faint glow of the aurora in green.
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We see changes in the aurora pattern as the night progresses.
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A slight brightening in northwestern Canada signals the start of the substorm.
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The event continues to intensify.
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Near the peak of the event, it has moved over Alaska.
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The storm continues to fade and appears to move westward relative to the ground.
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The event fades to invisibility.

Visualization Credits

Tom Bridgman (GST): Lead Animator
Greg Shirah (NASA/GSFC): Animator
Rani Gran (NASA/GSFC): Producer
Vassilis Angelopoulos (University of California at Berkeley): Scientist
David G. Sibeck (NASA/GSFC): Scientist
Harald Frey (University of California at Berkeley): Scientist
Nicola Fox (Johns Hopkins University/APL): Scientist
Please give credit for this item to:
NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio

Short URL to share this page:
http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/3513

Mission:
Polar

Data Used:
Polar/VIS 1997-01-12T05:32:00UT - 1997-01-12T09:08:54UT
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.

This item is part of this series:
Auroral Substorms - the View from Space

Keywords:
SVS >> HDTV
GCMD >> Earth Science >> Atmosphere >> Atmospheric Phenomena
GCMD >> Earth Science >> Sun-earth Interactions >> Ionosphere/Magnetosphere Particles >> Aurorae
SVS >> Auroral Substorm
SVS >> For Educators
NASA Science >> Earth
NASA Science >> Sun
GCMD >> Earth Science >> Sun-earth Interactions >> Ionosphere/magnetosphere Dynamics >> Aurorae

GCMD keywords can be found on the Internet with the following citation: Olsen, L.M., G. Major, K. Shein, J. Scialdone, S. Ritz, T. Stevens, M. Morahan, A. Aleman, R. Vogel, S. Leicester, H. Weir, M. Meaux, S. Grebas, C.Solomon, M. Holland, T. Northcutt, R. A. Restrepo, R. Bilodeau, 2013. NASA/Global Change Master Directory (GCMD) Earth Science Keywords. Version 8.0.0.0.0