Astronomers launched a NASA-funded rocket into the aurora borealis, which are colloquially known as the northern lights. The 46-foot rocket, the Magnetosphere-Ionosphere Coupling in the Alfvén resonator (MICA), launched from the Poker Flat Research Range, 30 miles north of Fairbanks, Alaska.
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The source of auroras has been found by a string of satellites named Themis. Auroras are bright dancing lights that fill polar skies.
The original energy source for the aurora is the solar wind, a stream of charged plasma that billows from the Sun and deforms the Earth’s magnetic field, producing a long ‘magnetotail’ on the far side of the Earth.
While coronal mass ejections can cause larger plasma storms that last for more than 24 hours, deformation of the magnetotail can create smaller substorms that last just a few hours.
