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Observations of airglow and geomagnetic pulsations at Paratunka and Stecolny
- Solar-Terrestrial Environment Laboratory, Nagoya University, Japan
- Institute of Cosmophysical Researches and Radio Wave Propagation FEB RAS, Russia
We have made observations of airglow images and geomagnetic pulsations at
Paratunka (52.9N, 158.3E, MLAT=46.0N, since August 2007) and Stecolny
(60.0N, 150.9E, MLAT=52.2N, since November 2008) near Magadan in
Far-eastern Russia, using two all-sky cooled-CCD airglow imagers and two
64Hz-sampling induction magnetometers. In this presentation we review our
recent results obtained by these continuous observations. The airglow
imagers observe gravity waves and ionospheric disturbances in the
mesopause region and in the ionosphere at altitudes of 80-100 km and
200-300 km, respectively. Climatology of gravity wave propagation
direction has been made using the mesospheric airglow images at Paratunka.
Nighttime medium-scale traveling ionospheric disturbances (MSTIDs) are
often observed in the ionospheric 630-nm airglow images. Comparison with
plasma velocities observed by the SuperDARN Hokkaido radar has been made
to understand detailed plasma dynamics in the MSTIDs. Variation of
polarization angle of Pc1 geomagnetic pulsations within a frequency band
are reported from these two stations, suggesting spatial distributions of
ionospheric Pc1 sources at subauroral latitudes. The Pc1 pulsations cause
loss of relativistic electrons in the Earth's radiation belts, and thus,
investigation of Pc1 pulsations merits attention for space weather
research.