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Black Aurora
Thu Feb 05, 2004
Listen in RealAudio 
You may have been fortunate to witness the legendary red and green curtains of the aurora
borealis. But did you notice dark empty regions within the aurora? Those dark spaces are the
mysterious black aurora. Hi, I'm Bryan Yeaton for The Weather Notebook.
Graduate students and researchers at Alaska's Geophysical Institute coined the term "black
aurora" in jest during the 1960s. When making visual observations of the Northern Lights, they
occasionally noted unusual auroral forms with dark spaces between pale, diffuse aurorae which
they first thought to be optical illusions.
Further research determined black aurorae were indeed real and represented holes in the
ionosphere, the upper atmosphere region where aurorae form. The black aurorae can take on many
faces: dark rings, curls, or black blobs floating upon a sea of faint, glowing aurora. These
anti-auroras can ascend to over 20,000 kilometres and last for several minutes.
Only recently have Swedish and British researchers begun to unravel the puzzle of black
aurora, using the Cluster satellites -- Rumba, Salsa, Samba and Tango -- to make detailed
observations of the ionosphere.
It appears that black aurorae form in patches of the ionosphere where conditions are the exact
opposite of those forming normal aurora, where, in regions known as positively charged
electric-potential structures, negatively charged electrons are accelerated upwards into
space. In contrast, aurorae arise within negatively charged electric-potential structures
where electrons spiral down from outer space into the atmosphere.
When black aurora mixes with diffuse aurora displays, its black curls can combine with visible
auroral curls to form a series of space-plasma whirlpools wafting across the heavens. Now
that's cool.
Thanks to our contributing writer, meteorologist Keith Heidorn. The Weather Notebook is
supported by Subaru of America and the National Science Foundation. And thanks to Davis
Weather Instruments for making our 2004 tour possible!
Today's Links
Black Aurora article:
http://www.gi.alaska.edu/ScienceForum/ASF4/422.html
Black Auroras:
http://sci.esa.int/science-e/www/object/index.cfm?fobjectid=29100
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