A Wondrous Sheen: Optical Studies of Aurora in the Digital Age

The aurora has been watched for eons, and observed scientifically for over 100 years. In this period of discovery, the GI has pioneered many studies using optical instruments in conjunction with measurements from ground-based radars, sounding rockets and satellites, to make major advances in understanding how auroras are generated and why they look the way they do. Using this knowledge and a figurative explosion in digital technology, especially low-cost high-sensitivity digital imagers, we are now expanding the boundaries of our understanding, including the range of brightness - from very faint to blazing bright auroral forms, the scale size - from a few meters to thousands of kilometers, and the temporal realm - from 1000 frame-per-second