THEMIS Launch is finally set for today. The mission webpage is in http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/themis/main/index.html. NASA'S THEMIS (Time History of Events and Macroscale Interactions during Substorms) is a 2-year mission consisting of 5 identical probes that will study the violent colorful eruptions of Auroras. It aims to resolve one of the oldest mysteries in space physics, namely to determine what physical process in near-Earth space initiates the violent eruptions of the aurora that occur during substorms in the Earth's magnetosphere.
To "compensate" the THEMIS media impact, ESA describes some results of CLUSTER relative to the Auroras in the ESA's webpage.
Well... it seems that this post is out of the scope of this webpage... or not?... From the point of view of the amateur observational astronomy, auroras are good targets to observe. Of course, if you are in the correct place!. As a sample, I post here a video of Auroras that I filmed in Iceland during September, 2003 with a digital video camera in NIR. It is mounted as a new age music videoclip... so... enjoy it!
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