What Powers the Aurora?The aurora occur during magnetic disturbances that disrupt the Earth's magnetic tail. These disturbances produce explosive energy release and send million-ampere currents shunting through the high latitude upper atmosphere. |
 |
About the MovieThis is a low resolution exerpt from a model-generated movie showing the disruption of the magnetotail during a magnetic disturbance. What is being displayed is the plasma density. The disruption of the magnetotail sends high velocity particles down through the high latitude atmosphere producing beautiful, active auroral displays. A complete low resolution version of the movie in MPEG (980 kB) format is available as well as a complete high resolution version in MPEG (3.0 Mb) format. The movie was provided courtesy of R. Lopez, C. Goodrich and J. Lyon using facilities at the Advanced Visualization Lab at the University of Maryland. |
The source of this material is Windows to the Universe, at http://windows2universe.org/ from the National Earth Science Teachers Association (NESTA). The Website was developed in part with the support of UCAR and NCAR, where it resided from 2000 - 2010. © 2010 National Earth Science Teachers Association. Windows to the Universe® is a registered trademark of NESTA. All Rights Reserved. Site policies and disclaimer.