A quarter of a century with the auroral oval
Abstract
A quarter of a century has elapsed since the concept of auroral oval was introduced into geophysics, and there has been a recent revival of interest among scientists in the evolution throughout the last 3 centuries of our knowledge of the global distribution of auroras. The auroral oval is considered to be a high-latitude region of the upper atmosphere with permanent luminescence; this region is fixed relative to the sun and is acentric with respect to the geomagnetic pole (that is, the oval is located nearer to the pole by 10° in latitude on the dayside in comparison to the nightside). The development of auroral knowledge from the combination of speculation and intuition in the 18th and the early 19th centuries to the latest observations and conclusions (which are based on the data of the planetary network of all-sky cameras, photographs and planetary images obtained from satellites, and modern concepts concerning the magnetospheric structure) has been a spiral. Each new level of development is contingent on the accumulation of fresh experimental evidence and the associate qualitative changes in the adopted concepts of the laws of the studied natural phenomenon. It is not surprising that the new concepts should often comprise the earlier ideas. However, because they are based on data that was inaccessible to the earlier researchers, the new-found regularities and their generalizations have never replicated the former ideas completely. They constitute a new level in the eternal endeavor to understand the natural system.
- Publication:
-
EOS Transactions
- Pub Date:
- October 1986
- DOI:
- 10.1029/EO067i040p00761-02
- Bibcode:
- 1986EOSTr..67..761F
- Keywords:
-
- Auroras;
- Earth Magnetosphere;
- Geophysics;
- Space Plasmas;
- Electroluminescence;
- Magnetic Poles;
- Magnetohydrodynamic Waves;
- Satellite Observation;
- Magnetospheric Physics: Magnetospheric configuration and dynamics;
- Magnetospheric Physics: Energetic particles;
- precipitating;
- Magnetospheric Physics: Auroral phenomena;
- History of Geophysics: Solar-planetary relationships