THEMIS approaches prime observing position

BERKELEY, Calif., Dec. 12 (UPI) -- Five U.S. space agency satellites launched last February to investigate magnetic storms around Earth will move into prime observing position next month.

The satellites have already observed the dynamics of a rapidly developing magnetic substorm, confirmed the existence of giant magnetic "ropes" and observed small explosions in the outskirts of Earth's magnetic field.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Time History of Events and Macroscale Interactions during Substorms, or THEMIS, satellites are managed and operated by the University of California-Berkeley.

"The substorm behaved quite unexpectedly," said THEMIS principal investigator Vassilis Angelopoulos, an associate professor at UCLA and a research physicist at UC-Berkeley's Space Sciences Laboratory. "The auroras surged westward twice as fast as anyone thought possible, crossing 15 degrees of longitude in less than one minute. The storm traversed an entire polar time zone, or 400 miles, in 60 seconds flat."

The findings were presented Tuesday in San Francisco during the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union.