Rayed Southern Lights Observed at Belgrano Station: A Study

Abstract

The main purpose of this paper is to study the temporal evolution of the auroral electrojet indices one hour before and two hours after the instant of the sudden appearance of rayed southern lights (RAD5). We considered the observations of the RADs as the snapshot taken with a single all-sky camera placed at Belgrano Station (78.8°S, 38.8°W). Thirty three events were studied to exemplify the tendency of both electrojet currents to see if they manifest exponential shapes The above mentioned cases were split according to the signature of the AE index around the moment of the observed RADs. We corroborate the relationship between the southward interplanetary magnetic field component and the occurrence of auroral substorms. We confirmed the tendency of the total and the westward electrojet current intensities to increase and decrease according to an exponential time function.