A statistical study of the O2 aurora observed by the Swedish satellite MATS

Auroral research increases the understanding of the geospace dynamics and how it is affected by solar activity and space weather. To improve auroral precipitation models, a wide range of auroral emission data needs to be accounted for in the testing and validation. However, there is a lack in auroral studies within the atmospheric emission band of the oxygen molecule. This thesis project addresses the shortage by conducting a statistical analysis of the aurora observed by the Swedish satellite MATS, since MATS specifically performs imaging in the O₂ atmospheric band.
  This project work involved writing a detection algorithm to find and collect the middle columns of the images containing aurora. After concatenating multiple middle columns, distinct auroral profiles became visible, and the highest point of each such detected auroral profile is the foundation of the analysis. Patterns, trends and relationships were investigated by plotting the peak points characteristics on polar maps, such as altitude, geomagnetic location, Kp-index and integrated intensity.