Surveying pulsating auroras

Abstract

Abstract. The early-morning auroral oval is dominated by pulsating auroras. These auroras have often been discussed as if they are one phenomenon, but they are not. Pulsating auroras are separable based on the extent of their pulsation and structuring into at least three subcategories. This study surveyed 10 years of all-sky camera data to determine the occurrence probability for each type of pulsating aurora in magnetic local time and magnetic latitude. Amorphous pulsating aurora (APAs) are a pervasive, nearly daily feature in the early-morning auroral oval which have an 86 % chance of occurrence at their peak. Patchy pulsating auroras (PPAs) and patchy auroras (PAs) are less common, peaking at 21 % and 29 %, respectively. Before local midnight, pulsating auroras are almost exclusively APAs. Occurrence distributions of APAs, PPAs, and PAs are mapped into the equatorial plane to approximately locate their source regions. The PA and PPA distributions primarily map to locations approximately between 4 and 9 RE, while some APAs map to farther distances, suggesting that the mechanism which structures PPAs and PAs is constrained to the inner magnetosphere. This is in agreement with Grono and Donovan (2019), which located these auroras relative to the proton aurora.