Auroras North and South

It has long been known that large displays of the Aurora Australis occur when there are large displays of Aurora Borealis. Lack of simultaneous observations at conjugate points, points on the two ends of a magnetic field line, long prevented determination of the degree of exactness between Northern and Southern Hemisphere auroras.

Several years ago researchers from the University of Alaska and Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory joined forces to investigate auroral conjugacy. They mounted auroral cameras in long-range jet aircraft based at Anchorage and Christchurch, New Zealand. The aircraft flew simultaneously over carefully designed paths crossing the northern and southern auroral zones. Eighteen such flights showed that the auroras in north and south behave alike and sometimes are exact copies of each other. The degree of exactness and the nature of the differences that do at times occur is useful information that yields a better understanding of the aurora and the processes that influence it.