Leaping and vortex motion of the shock aurora toward the late evening sector observed on 26 February 2023

Nanjo, Sota; Yamauchi, Masatoshi; Johnsen, Magnar Gullikstad; Yokoyama, Yoshihiro; Brändström, Urban; Ogawa, Yasunobu; Willer, Anna Naemi; Hosokawa, Keisuke

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/angeo-43-303-2025

Articles | Volume 43, issue 1

https://doi.org/10.5194/angeo-43-303-2025

© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/angeo-43-303-2025

© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 43, issue 1

Regular paper

| Highlight paper

|

11 Jun 2025

Regular paper | Highlight paper |

| 11 Jun 2025

Leaping and vortex motion of the shock aurora toward the late evening sector observed on 26 February 2023

Sota Nanjo, Masatoshi Yamauchi, Magnar Gullikstad Johnsen, Yoshihiro Yokoyama, Urban Brändström, Yasunobu Ogawa, Anna Naemi Willer, and Keisuke Hosokawa

Data sets

DSCOVR Solar Wind Data Portal NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information https://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/dscovr/portal/index.html

Mid-latitude Geomagnetic Indices ASY and SYM (ASY/SYM Indices) S. Imajo et al. https://doi.org/10.14989/267216

All-sky camera images from Kiruna on 26 February 2023 Swedish Institute of Space Physics (IRF) https://www.irf.se/alis/allsky/krn/2023/02/26/19/

All-sky camera images from Skibotn on 26 February 2023 University of Electro-Communications http://darndeb08.cei.uec.ac.jp/~nanjo/public/skibotn_imgs/2022_season/20230226/

Video supplement

The video version of Figure 3 Sota Nanjo https://doi.org/10.5446/69281

The video version of Figure 4 Sota Nanjo https://doi.org/10.5446/69280

Editor-in-chief

The study is devoted to a shock auroral event that occurred on February 26, 2023, in northern Scandinavia, and represents the first time such nighttime auroral features have been captured by ground-based cameras. Shock auroras result from a very specific driving impulse in the solar wind. While the primary effects appear on the dayside of the Earth, the authors succeeded in observing the nightside signatures, which are rare and difficult to detect. The study is a successful scientific achievement as it presents newly discovered phenomena that provide new insights into solar wind interactions with the nightside ionosphere.