Characteristics of Pulsating Aurora

We have investigated the spatiotemporal characteristics of pulsating auroral patches observed with an all-sky imager located at Poker Flat, Alaska. Pulsating aurora often covers the entire sky with intermixed large and small-scale patches that vary in intensity or disappear and reappear on different time scales and timings. The broad definition of pulsating aurora covers patches and bands from tens to several tens of km which have a quasi-periodic temporal variation from 1 s to tens of seconds. In this paper we examine >15 patches from different events. We analyze all-sky movies (557.7 nm, 3.31 Hz) with a simple, yet robust, technique that allows us to determine the scale size dependent variability of the >15 individual patches. A spatial 2D Fourier Transform is used to separate the aurora into different horizontal scale sizes, and by correlating each patch for all image separations and available scale sizes smaller than the patch itself, we reveal what scale sizes are pulsating and their variability. The patches are found to be persistent, meaning that we can follow them for typically 5 minutes. The period of the pulsations is often remarkably variable and it seems that only certain scale sizes pulsate (typically the size of the patch). The patches drift with the background ExB plasma drift indicating that the magnetospheric source mechanism drifts with the field lines.