Parallel currents in the magnetotail and their connection to aurora

• Main Authors: Wanzambi, Ellinor, Gustafsson, Maja
• Format: Bachelor Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: Uppsala universitet, Institutionen för fysik och astronomi 2018
• Subjects: Fusion; Plasma and Space Physics; plasma och rymdfysik; Antarctic; Lagrange; Svalbard; Antarc*; aurora australis
• Online Access: http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-355621

We present an analysis from MMS satellites where we detected the strongest parallel currents from their data during the months May till November 2017. The strongest parallel current in July happened 2017-07-16 at 6 o’clock. At this event we found a change in the magnetic flow density at the locations: A. Svalbard, which would have resulted in an aurora borealis if it was not for the summer light. B. Antarctic, which visibly did result in an aurora australis. By examine the source of the parallel current, we looked near the Lagrange point L1 between Earth and the Sun and could observe how the flow pressure and magnetic field changed. This motivated the investigation by looking at the sun pictures by helioviewer, where we could observe an outburst the 2017-07-14, which turned out to be the requested source of this event.