斯堪的纳维亚雷达阵列将探索极光之谜

EISCAT_3D will paint a new picture of the upper atmosphere as it is roiled by solar outbursts RICHARD STONE, on Svalbard in Norway The images captured in 2017 looked wrong. Against the pale winter sky above the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard, tiny green smudges hovered beside an auroral curtain. The fragmented auroralike emissions (FAEs) were only a few kilometers across and lasted less than 1 minute. Most puzzling of all, they seemed to ignore invisible magnetic field lines that normally define the contours of the northern lights. “They really are a weird little thing,” says Katie Herlingshaw, a space physicist at the University Centre in Svalbard (UNIS). A major new instrument may finally provide answers. …