14 DAY TRIAL // The beautiful northern lights, or Aurora Borealis as they are commonly known, are usually triggered in the northern regions of the Earth, as electrically charged particles originating in the solar winds are captured by the planet's magnetic field and drawn towards the general regions of the poles. These electrically charged particles interact with the molecules in the atmosphere and generate light over a large color spectrum through a process similar to that which makes fluorescent light bulbs work.
The Aurora Borealis name comes from the Roman goddess of dawn, Aurora, and the Greek name for the north wind, which is Boreas. The phenomenon mostly presents greenish hues, occurs at altitudes of 65 to 650 kilometers in the atmosphere, in a region called the Auroral Oval. They are called northern lights because it only occurs in the northern hemisphere, as the southern phenomenon is called Aurora Australis. In Greek Australis means southern.
New information on the complete event that takes place during these luminescent emissions reveals that they usually occur on magnetic fields stretching from the surface of the planet all the way to that of the Sun. Until recently, the study of the energy that is captured by Earth's magnetic fields while triggering the luminescent emission phenomenon was virtually impossible due to the lack of proper tools.
Nevertheless, the five satellites that build the THEMIS array studying the Earth's atmosphere surprised this year the latest aurora phenomenon that occurred over the northern regions of the North American continent on the 23rd of March, revealing that the solar wind storm that interacted with the atmosphere traveled an entire time zone, equivalent to more than 600 kilometers in just under a minute.
The multicolored spectacle, presenting periodical rises in brightness lasted for more than two hours, and revealed separate outbursts each one lasting for about ten minutes before dying out, or building their brightness by reinforcing each other.
According to data collected by NASA's probes, the energy released during the outbreak of the storm equaled that of an earthquake of 5.5 degrees on the Richter scale and presented evidence of magnetic lines connecting the upper layers of the Earth's atmosphere to that of the Sun. These magnetic structures could be responsible for guiding the electrically charged particles generated by the solar coronal emission towards the surface of the Earth and generating the aurora and the geomagnetic storms.
Though all of the probes that form the THEMIS array were able to detect evidence of the existence of these magnetic lines, data extracted from only one of them was sufficient enough to map the structure. Also, the team that operates the THEMIS has been able to view how heat waves and pressure blasts triggered by the solar storms evolve in time.