Articles | Volume 35, issue 2
https://doi.org/10.5194/angeo-35-217-2017
https://doi.org/10.5194/angeo-35-217-2017
Regular paper
 | 
08 Feb 2017
Regular paper |  | 08 Feb 2017

A statistical study of the motion of pulsating aurora patches: using the THEMIS All-Sky Imager

Bing Yang, Eric Donovan, Jun Liang, and Emma Spanswick

Data sets

Aurora Data THEMIS http://data.phys.ucalgary.ca/sort_by_project/THEMIS/asi/stream0/

The one-hour and one-minute AE index World Data Centre http://wdc.kugi.kyoto-u.ac.jp/aedir/index.html

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Short summary
This is the first statistical study of the motion of patchy pulsating aurora (PPA). Our results show that PPA patches mainly drift eastward after midnight and westward before midnight, which suggests that the drifts of auroral patches could be a proxy for the ionospheric convection and provide a convenient and accurate method to remotely sense the magnetospheric convection. We also found that patch velocities do not seem to depend on AE index.