Orientation variation of dayside auroral arc alignments obtained from all-sky observation at yellow river station, Svalbard

Abstract

The orientations of dayside auroral arc alignments were calculated for over 40,000 images from all-sky observation at Yellow River Station, Svalbard. For each arc, its “orientation” and “tilt” are defined as the angle the arc alignment makes with the dusk-dawn direction and the local east-west direction, respectively. The mean arc orientation increases linearly with the increasing magnetic local time (MLT). There is a reversal point of the arc tilt located at near 10.5 MLT. Compared with the mean orientation, auroral arc alignment tilts to morning side in the higher latitude and tilts to evening side in the lower latitude in the prenoon sector, whereas it is the opposite in the postnoon sector. We further studied the effects of the interplanetary magnetic field (IMF) on the location of the arc tilt reversal point. We found that the reversal position shifts toward the midday for negative By.