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Auroral Morphological Changes to the Formation of Auroral Spiral during the Late Substorm Recovery Phase: Polar UVI and Ground All-Sky Camera Observations
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  • Motoharu Nowada,
  • Yukinaga Miyashita,
  • Noora Partamies,
  • Alexander William Degeling,
  • Quanqi Shi
Motoharu Nowada
Shandong University, Weihai

Corresponding Author:[email protected]

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Yukinaga Miyashita
Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute, Korea University of Science and Technology
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Noora Partamies
The University Centre in Svalbard, Birkeland Centre for Space Science, University of Bergen, Norway
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Alexander William Degeling
Shandong University, Weihai
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Quanqi Shi
Shandong University, Weihai
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Abstract

Polar ultraviolet imager (UVI) and an all-sky camera at Longyearbyen contemporaneously detected an auroral vortex structure (so-called “auroral spiral”). Particularly, from space, the auroral spiral was observed as a “small spot” in the poleward region of the main auroral oval near midnight, which was formed while the substorm-associated auroral bulge was subsiding and several poleward-elongated auroral streak-like structures appeared during the late substorm recovery phase. To pursue the spiral source region in the magnetotail, we trace each UVI image along field lines to the magnetic equatorial plane of the nightside magnetosphere using an empirical magnetic field model. Interestingly, the magnetotail region corresponding to the auroral spiral covered a broad region from Xgsm ~ -40 to -70 E at Ygsm ~ 8 to 12 RE. The appearance of this auroral spiral may suggest that extensive areas of the magnetotail remain active even during the late substorm recovery phase.