Earthsky

Private: THEMIS mission to study mystery of dancing aurora

08-24-2007 - Space

NASA’s THEMIS mission is designed to study the northern lights, also known as the aurora borealis.

These dancing lights are beautiful to see, when they become visible, suddenly from Earth’s far northern latitudes. But the same conditions that create the northern lights can also disrupt communications systems on Earth, orbiting satellites and be harmful to humans in space. Geomagnetic storms erupt when gases in Earth’s atmosphere collide with particles from the sun. NASA wants to know what triggers these storms so they launched the THEMIS mission in February, 2007.

THEMIS is actually five satellites in one. This array of THEMIS satellites wasn’t expected to reveal any secrets until early 2008. David Sibeck, Project Scientist for THEMIS, said they were happily surprised when they conducted a test run.

David Sibeck: _The spacecrafts were all in the same orbit arrayed at different distances from Earth and they tracked the change in the Earth’s magnetic field propagating AWAY from the earth. That was a surprise. We were expecting the changes to propagate from distances say halfway to the moon towards the Earth, instead we’ve now seen our first example in which they move away from the Earth._

Our thanks today to “NASA”:http://www.nasa.gov: explore, discover, understand.

View a great “animation”:http://earthsky.org/article/ride-along-with-an-earth-orbiting-satellite of THEMIS.

The name THEMIS stands for Time History of Events and Macroscale Interactions during Substorms. It’s also the name for the Greek God for Justice.

“The Mystery: Sudden Dancing Lights in the Sky”:http://ds9.ssl.berkeley.edu/THEMIS/mission_mystery.html

“THEMIS in the Classroom”:http://ds9.ssl.berkeley.edu/THEMIS/classroom.html

*Our thanks to:*
Dr. David Sibeck
Project Scientist for NASA’s THEMIS mission

Written by EarthSky

2 Responses to “Private: THEMIS mission to study mystery of dancing aurora”

  1. yves anna says:
    September 11, 2007 at 2:14 pm

    do children have the same brain as grown up…………..

    Reply
  2. Beladee says:
    September 23, 2007 at 12:02 pm

    In the northern Catskill Mountain town of Gilboa, NY , which is approximately 2000 feet in elevation, I owned 10 acres of land and put a Tipi on it. I tried an experiment in 1991 and lived in my Tipi for 4 months, from July 1st to October 31st.
    One night, in mid to late October, (I believe), I came home at 9PM from visiting friends. In the northern sky, which I had an expansive view of from my spot on Leonard’s Mountain, I saw huge, undulating, purple and pink lights moving in the sky like enormous waves on the ocean! I was completely bewildered because the nearest, large town of Oneonta, NY was 40 miles away, and any other larger town that could send out lights was too far away to create them.
    I watched these incredibly beautiuful lights, mesmerized, until I trekked my way up the trail to my Tipi “home” in the forest.
    I mentioned this amazing occurance to an older couple I knew, who had been raised in this dairy farm region of New York State, and they told me I had seen the Northern Lights or the Aurora Borealis!
    I did not know you could see them from such “low” latitudes and it was an experience of a lifetime for a person raised in New York City !

    Reply

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