Auroral Optical flow velocities compared with SuperDARN convection

Abstract:

Modern red-line all-sky cameras have a spatial resolution on the order of 1 km with and temporal resolution of only 3 s. In recent years, the deployment of new cameras has expanded the coverage to include most of the auroral oval and polar cap above the North-American continent. Several studies have characterized optical emissions observed with these ground-based instruments; however, currently only rudimentary techniques have been applied to measure the motion of these optical structures. Here we show optical flow calculations to analyze the motion of optical structures observed with new red-line all-sky cameras. Optical flow calculations represent the apparent motion of objects in consecutive frames. The result of this technique provides two-dimensional flow fields, which can inform us of ionospheric electric fields and neutral winds. We compare these optical flow calculations with SuperDARN convection.