Proton and Electron Aurora over EISCAT: Optical Signature and Associated Ionospheric Perturbations
Abstract
For moderately magnetically disturbed conditions, the EISCAT radar site near Tromso, Norway, is located on the equatorial edge of the afternoon auroral oval for several hours, where energetic protons are a dominant particle energy source. A unique signature of proton precipitation is the Doppler-shifted H emissions. An imaging Echelle spectrograph designed for high spectral resolution studies of selected features located in the visible spectrum (including H alpha and H beta) was deployed to identify and characterize proton precipitation at EISCAT during two winter-long campaigns in 2001-2002 and 2002-2003. Information on the overall auroral activity and on the cloud cover is provided by a large field-of-view conventional imaging spectrograph. We discuss a comprehensive set of combined optical, radar, and particle observations from these campaigns. Our ability to identify the type of precipitating energetic particles and to infer the ionospheric response is estimated from this dataset.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Aug 01, 2003
- Accession Number
- ADA637111
Entities
People
- B. Isham
- D. Lummerzheim
- David Evans
- F. Rich
- J. Jussila
- John R. Baumgardner
- M. Galand
- S. Chakrabarti
- U. P. Loevhaug
Organizations
- Air Force Research Laboratory