Aurora Mysteries Unlocked with NASA’s THEMIS Mission
Auroras are created when charged particles from the Sun are trapped in Earth’s magnetic environment – the magnetosphere – and are funneled into Earth’s upper atmosphere, where collisions cause hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen atoms and molecules to glow. A special type of aurora, draped east-west across the night sky like a glowing pearl necklace, is helping scientists better understand the science of auroras and their powerful drivers out in space. Known as auroral beads, these lights often show up just before large auroral displays, which are caused by electrical storms in space called substorms. Previously, scientists weren’t sure if auroral beads were somehow connected to other auroral displays as a phenomenon in space that precedes substorms, or if they were caused by disturbances closer to Earth’s atmosphere. But now powerful new computer models combined with observations from NASA’s “Time History of Events and Macroscale Interactions during Substorms” (THEMIS) mission have provided the first strong evidence of the events in space that lead to the appearance of these beads.
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Glad you enjoyed the video and the music. Here is some relevant background information:
Video Title: Walking On Air
Song Title: Walking in the Air
Singer: Peter Auty
Writer: Howard Blake
The video features a series of time lapse sequences photographed by the Expedition 30 crew aboard the International Space Station.
Set to the song “Walking in the Air,” by Howard Blake, the video takes viewers on a journey around the world, over brightly lit cities at night, through auroras, and over dazzling lightning displays.
The sequences are as follows:
0:01 – Stars over southern United States
0:08 – US west coast to Canada
0:21 – Central Europe to the Middle East
0:36 – Aurora Australis over the Indian Ocean
0:54 – Storms over Africa
1:08 – Central United States
1:20 – Midwest United States
1:33 – United Kingdom to Baltic Sea
1:46 – Moon set
1:55 – Northern United States to Eastern Canada
2:12 – Aurora Australis over the Indian Ocean
2:32 – Comet Lovejoy
2:53 – Aurora Borealis over Hudson Bay
3:06 – United Kingdom to Central Europe
Song lyrics:
We're walking in the air
We're floating in the moonlit sky
The people far below are sleeping as we fly
I'm holding very tight
I'm riding in the midnight blue
I'm finding I can fly so high above with you
Far across the world
The villages go by like dreams
The rivers and the hills
The forests and the streams
Children gaze open mouth
Taken by surprise
Nobody down below believes their eyes
We're surfing in the air
We're swimming in the frozen sky
We're drifting over icy
Mountain floating by
Suddenly swooping low on an ocean deep
Arousing of a mighty monster from its sleep
We're walking in the air
We're floating in the midnight sky
And everyone who sees us greets us as we fly