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Rapid fading of auroral activity a few minutes before substorm breakup has earlier been analyzed in case-studies. Here we report on a study in which all-sky camera (ASC) and magnetic data over 3 years were examined to find breakups that were accompanied by a preceding fading. To illustrate typical features of the fading effect we analyze three events in detail and discuss seven other events to find the spatial and temporal behavior of the fading and the global conditions favoring this phenomenon, which is not associated with every breakup. In these ten events the precipitation diminished typically for about 2 min and a local breakup followed after 2–3 min. Usually the arc which broke up had faded earlier. Comparison with geostationary electron flux recordings shows that in many cases the global onset had already taken place when the fading was recorded at a different longitude. Thus fading is not just a growth-phase phenomenon as often thought, but can also appear as a precursor of the approaching auroral bulge. The AE index and solar-wind data reveal that the fading has a tendency to take place during magnetically disturbed conditions caused by continuous energy input from the solar wind. Furthermore, while a widely recognized phenomenon, we have found that the fading prior to breakup is not a very common feature in the spatio-temporal scale of auroral ASC recordings. In many cases the deepness of the fading had a longitudinal dependence, which leads to the suggestion that this phenomenon is related to azimuthal gradients in the tail magnetic field and/or plasma pressure. Possible scenarios causing fading both before and after the onset are discussed based on a few previously presented theoretical auroral-arc models.

This work presents a novel image accumulation filter technique that reveals small scale features and details from intense luminosity or high dynamic range video recordings. It was discovered and developed from the analyses of the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation (NRK) film of the total solar eclipse that occurred Friday 20th of March 2015 in Longyearbyen (78° N, 15° E) on Svalbard, Norway. The result of the filter is fused with a High Dynamic Range (HDR) image of the Corona and the Solar Dynamic Observatory (SDO) image of the solar disk.

In order to facilitate usage of optical data in space climate studies, we have developed an automated algorithm to quantify the complexity of auroral structures as they appear in ground-based all-sky images. The image analysis is based on a computationally determined “arciness” value, which describes how arc like the auroral structures in the image are. With this new automatic method we have analyzed the type of aurora in about 1 million images of green aurora (λ = 557.7nm) captured at five camera stations in Finnish and Swedish Lapland in 1996–2007. We found that highly arc like structures can be observed in any time sector and their portion of the auroral structures varies much less than the fraction of more complex forms. The diurnal distribution of arciness is in agreement with an earlier study with high arc occurrence rate in the evening hours and steadily decreasing toward the late morning hours. The evolution of less arc-like auroral structures is more dependent on the level of geomagnetic activity and solar cycle than the occurrence of arcs. The median arciness is higher during the years close to the solar minimum than during the rest of the solar cycle. Unlike earlier proposed, the occurrence rate of both arcs and more complex auroral structures increases toward the solar maximum and decreases toward the solar minimum. The cyclic behavior of auroral structures seen in our data is much more systematic and clear than previously reported visual studies suggest. The continuous arciness index describing the complexity of auroral structures can improve our understanding on auroral morphology beyond the few commonly accepted structure classes, such as arcs, patches, and omega bands. Arciness can further be used to study the relationship of auroral structures at different complexity levels and magnetospheric dynamics.

This study examines auroral colour camera data from the Canadian Dense Array Imaging SYstem (DAISY). The Dense Array consists of three imagers with different narrow (compared to all-sky view) field-of-view optics. The main scientific motivation arises from an earlier study by Knudsen et al. (2001) who used All-Sky Imager (ASI) combined with even earlier TV camera observations (Maggs and Davis, 1968) to suggest that there is a gap in the distribution of auroral arc widths at around 1 km. With DAISY observations we are able to show that the gap is an instrument artifact and due to limited spatial resolution and coverage of commonly used instrumentation, namely ASIs and TV cameras. If the auroral scale size spectrum is indeed continuous, the mechanisms forming these structures should be able to produce all of the different scale sizes. So far, such a single process has not been proposed in the literature and very few models are designed to interact with each other even though the range of their favourable conditions do overlap. All scale-sizes should be considered in the future studies of auroral forms and electron acceleration regions, both in observational and theoretical approaches.

In this paper we report coordinated multispacecraft and ground-based observations of a double substorm onset close to Scandinavia on November 17, 1996. The Wind and the Geotail spacecraft, which were located in the solar wind and the subsolar magnetosheath, respectively, recorded two periods of southward directed interplanetary magnetic field (IMF). These periods were separated by a short northward IMF excursion associated with a solar wind pressure pulse, which compressed the magnetosphere to such a degree that Geotail for a short period was located outside the bow shock. The first period of southward IMF initiated a substorm growth. phase, which was clearly detected by an array of ground-based instrumentation and by Interball in the northern tail lobe. A first substorm onset occurred in close relation to the solar wind pressure pulse impinging on the magnetopause and almost simultaneously with the northward turning of the IMF. However, this substorm did not fully develop. In clear association with the expansion of the magnetosphere at the end of the pressure pulse, the auroral expansion was stopped, and the northern sky cleared. We will present evidence that the change in the solar wind dynamic pressure actively quenched the energy available for any further substorm expansion. Directly after this period, the magnetometer network detected signatures of a renewed substorm growth phase, which was initiated by the second southward turning of the IMF and which finally lead to a second, and this time complete, substorm intensification. We have used our multipoint observations in order to understand the solar wind control of the substorm onset and substorm quenching. The relative timings between the observations on the various satellites and on the ground were used to infer a possible causal relationship between the solar wind pressure variations and consequent substorm development. Furthermore, using a relatively simple algorithm to model the tail lobe field and the total tail flux, we show that there indeed exists a close relationship between the relaxation of a solar wind pressure pulse, the reduction of the tail lobe field, and the quenching of the initial substorm.

[1] We present ground-based and in situ observations from March 13, 2007. The THEMIS satellites were in the evening sector conjugate to THEMIS ground-based imagers. At ∼0507 UT there was an optical onset on inner CPS field lines. This involved near-simultaneous brightening of 1 MLT hour longitudinal segment of the onset arc. The part of the arc that brightened was that closest to the equatorward boundary of the diffuse (proton) aurora. Within one minute, a dipolarization front moved across four THEMIS satellites. Based on their locations, the order in which they detected the dipolarization front, and the auroral evolution, we assert that the expansion phase began earthward of the four satellites and evolved radially outwards. We conclude that this onset occurred in an azimuthally localized region of highly stretched field lines.

[1] With the deployment of the all-sky imager array of the THEMIS mission, we were able to construct a preliminary database of auroral substorm expansion phase onsets, from which we have established a number of common features characterizing the first tens of seconds of the substorm auroral intensification. We find that the intensification occurs within ∼10 sec over an arc segment extending approximately 1 h MLT and featuring wave-like formations distributed in longitude. The longitudinal wave number ranges between 100 and 300 such that the wavelength is comparable to the ion gyroradius in the central plasma sheet. The scale the intensification is about 10–30 sec. This study casts important observational constraints on substorm onset theories.