We sent out a survey to all of our users to learn more about them, how they use Aurorasaurus, and what they want from us in the future. Nearly 400 users responded so thank you to everyone who took the time to fill out the survey and share their experiences with us. Take a look at what we found out about our Aurorasaurus users!
With your citizen science observations, we’ve improved our map to provide you better alerts of aurora sightings near you, a more accurate view-line of where the aurora can be seen, and now included the Southern Lights!
We will explain the origins of one of more common measurements of geomagnetic activity, the Kp index, and compare it to the solar wind power that we talk about previously.
In our previous posts, we describe how the density, speed and magnetic field strength and direction of the solar wind are measured, what Bz is, and what those mean for the aurora. We also introduced a handy parameter called the solar wind power that combines all these measurements. Here, we provide more detail about the solar wind power that we use at Aurorasaurus.
We go into more detail about the role of magnetism in creating aurora and what “Bz” refers to.
What is the solar wind and what does it have to do with the aurora?
Surveying auroral emissions is a bit like looking at a giant television screen; the picture can help scientists figure out what is happening with energetic particles, and electromagnetic fields, from just above the Earth to far out in surrounding space. et’s talk about the space around our planet and some types of aurora.
Aurorasaurus hosted a Q&A session on Twitter after the large summer solstice aurora storm. Here is a recap of all the questions and answers.
On Monday, June 22, 2015 a number of coronal mass ejection (CME) events impacted Earth and, our plots of solar wind power showed a very high likelihood for strong aurora activity on Monday evening and Tuesday morning– and citizen scientists caught all the action!
On Friday, two separate CME events were detected and projected to reach the Earth at some point later in the weekend. Be on the lookout tonight for a possibility of strong aurora activity Monday evening/Tuesday morning (June 22nd and 23rd)!
