Why Aurora Physicists Are Excited about Fram2’s Private Astronauts

Arora scientists list private astronauts on unusual space missions

By Meghan Bartels Edited by Lee Billings

Four passengers launching on a spacex rocket on Monday are bound to a new orbital destination – looping from pole to pole, perpendicular to the Earth’s equator – dubbed on a mission Fram2 In a sign for a Norwegian polar ship.

prior to Fram2The crude missions reached classes up to 65 degrees for the equator only. This means that no astronauts ever shed in space in the north of the Antarctic region or Iceland. But interesting things occur in the atmosphere at high latitudes – the most famous, and andorus. Especially during an increased solar activity period, these displays usually appear at the northern and southern latitude of about 68 degrees during the night and at 78 degrees during the day, portraying a glowing oval around each pole. Other astronauts, especially at the International Space Station, have seen the other from space, but Fram2 The crew members are expecting more science to bring more science to Jennic Mikelsen observations.

During the plan Fram2Activities of activities, Mikelsen, in association with Katie Herlingshow, a space physicist at the University Center in Norway in Swalbard, who works with one Arora-Evolution, Crowdsored Science Project To understand spectacular atmospheric phenomena. “People are very much everywhere, and they have got all the phones, so they are actually, creating the most dense observation network,” Herlingshow says.

On supporting science journalism

If you are enjoying this article, consider supporting our award winning journalism Subscribe By purchasing a membership, you are helping to ensure the future of impressive stories about discoveries and ideas that shape our world.

Herlingshow created to develop that community A network of skywatchrs to track Fram2 Look for flight and ooraus Along with its route in both northern and southern hemisphere. He hopes that Mikelsen will be able to use these comments to catch unique footage of the display from the windows of the spacecraft. scientific American Talked with Heringashaw about the project and its goals.

,An edited transcript of the interview is as follows,

How will these observation be different from satellite data? What is the value of real people?

The satellite images we have usually focused on applying a wavelength type, such as a picture of the entire organ oval in ultraviolet. But what we really interested are small features that come and go very quickly. We do not really have a good way to catch these characteristics with polar-arbiting satellites.

Now we have a human who can change the camera settings, change the direction of indicating and what is coming in his orbit can be known. (Mikelsen) is taking these very high-resolution videos, and we also have full-color images. This is a very unique setup because these are the first people who have been there anytime.

What incident are you expecting to see? And how are they related to Andores?

Many people use the word “Arora” for anything, which is caused by charge particles coming from space with magnetic field lines, affects particles in the atmosphere and causes some types of light emissions. So the idea is that these particles should come from space. But there are some mild emissions that occur locally-in our environment-for example, by a very fast growing plasma. This is a debate about whether to call those “Arora” or just “Orolike”.

So we are calling them “weird arora” as a umbrella word. All these are relatively newly published conclusions about the characteristics that we do not fully understand.

For example, we have focused on these fragmented and alleic emissions – I just call them pieces. They do not look like a regular aurora nearby, which is vertically line in the magnetic field line direction; The pieces, they are coming almost vertically. It also indicates the fact that these things are not coming from space – something is getting local.

Sometimes near these pieces, we have constant emissions. We are nominated as “Bhoot Aurora” because it is white. Arora is usually not white – they may appear in this way because your eyes are surprisingly spoiled in taking unconscious colors. So many people see a gray kind of spot in the sky or something, but if you see it with scientific equipment that can remove these colors, usually you will see, eg, a green or red or blue. White is unusual for us because it means that all colors (of visible light) are present and are combined together to make white. This is strange for Arora, and it suggests any kind of heating effect going on in the environment that is managed to stimulate all these different colors, but we have not yet fully understand the mechanism behind it.

They are at high latitudes. For those who are slightly away in the south, they often see this second type of Arora called Steve. Steve can also be white in color, and we also see sometimes, nearby, these other things are called lines, which see a lot like pieces and behave. We are interested in this: Why do these things look like this? Why do they do this? And why do we see similar things in completely different places?

What do you hope you will complete during the mission?

We will be really happy if we will also find a set of good comments. We all really need just one time where (Mikelsen) some of these strange Arora are combined with some comments from the ground. The best case, then we are getting more than one, as much as possible. But it is trying to thread a needle with these things. You need a spacecraft that is somewhere dark, and then we have to check that it is not a cloud and Arora is active there and people are really awake and photographed from the ground.

We want to make some triangles to indicate what they are happening. We are probably hoping to see their three -dimensional structure, and it may also help us detect the related mechanisms and light emissions. We have also received radar to tell how hot it is, how fast things are going on, what is the density of particles. We would like to say what this strange Arora is doing, but it really depends on what kind of data we get.

People need to know if they want to participate?

People need to determine the right time on their camera. If this is the wrong time, we cannot use observation, and recently watches have changed in some parts of the world. If possible it is good to keep accuracy down for another. And then, when you are out of there, collect a place for your observation. We need those two things.

For real -time notification for astronauts, we are asking people to post on various Facebook groups. Photography instructions of Project Website Include a map of all different people. People should join the nearest group for one of the more global groups in their or each hemisphere.

But we cannot use these social media posts for science because as soon as you upload something on Facebook, all the information about resolution and time and exposure simply disappears. So we also ask people Submit on a platform called Skywarden—And the observation in the story, enter #SolarmaxMification. The observation presented here can win some awards that have been in space too- (Mikelsen) is flying something. Fram2 To remove mission patch.