The Case of the Missing Aurora
Credit:
J. P. Dwyer
Sometimes, near midnight,
auroras suddenly stop. Nobody knows why.
This
nightside gap in
aurora was
confirmed recently by D. Chua
(U. Washington) and colleagues in data from the
Ultraviolet Imager onboard the
Polar spacecraft.
The gap appears from space as a
slight break in a more
full auroral arc
surrounding a magnetic pole of the Earth.
Pictured above are clouds and
auroras occurring last August near
Wildcat Mountain in
Wisconsin.