Man-Made Aurora Will Help to Better Predict Space Weather

[Ian David]

New experiments that create a man-made aurora are helping researchers better understand how nitrogen in our atmosphere reacts when it is bombarded by the solar wind. Scientists from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory fired electrons of differing energies through a cloud of nitrogen gas to measure the ultraviolet light emitted by this collision, and the findings show our previous understanding of the processes that create the aurorae – which can also adversely affect orbiting satellites– may have been in error.

For more than 25 years, our understanding of terrestrial space weather has been partly based on incorrect assumptions about how nitrogen — the most abundant gas in our atmosphere –reacts when it collides with electrons produced by energetic ultraviolet sunlight and solar wind.

The new research has found that well-trusted measurements published in a 1985 journal paper by researchers Ajello and Shemansky contain a significant experimental error, putting decades of space weather findings dependent on this work on unstable ground.

New technology has allowed the researchers to better create and control the collisions and avoid the analytical pitfalls that plagued the 1985 findings.


The Aurora Borealis or northern lights and the Manicouagan Impact Crater reservoir (foreground) in Quebec, Canada, were featured in this photograph taken by astronaut Donald R. Pettit, Expedition Six NASA ISS science officer, on board the International Space Station (ISS). Credit: NASA

More:
http://spacefellowship.com/news/art20777/man-made-aurora-will-help-to-better-predict-space-weather.html

Hat-tip to: http://twitter.com/SpaceFellowship/status/15714337997





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