GOLD Instrument observes the July 2019 Total Solar Eclipse
Visualizations by
Tom Bridgman
Released on December 10, 2019
The GOLD instrument aboard the SES 14 satellite observes the Earth in ultraviolet light. In this region of the electromagnetic spectrum, it sees emission of atmospheric ions, atoms and molecules activated by incoming solar radiation.
In these visualizations, we see how the total solar eclipse of July 2012 significantly affected this emission as the Moon's shadow moved across Earth. We also show wavelengths corresponding to two different populations of emitting atoms, the nitrogen LBH bands and the oxygen 135.6nm emission which has a strong contribution from ionized oxygen atoms.
Because the oxygen ions are charged, they respond to the electromagnetic force and exhibit some enhancement straddling the magnetic equator - the Appleton anomaly, which is created by a process called the 'fountain effect'. The nitrogen emission, from atoms with no net electric charge, does not respond to Earth's magnetic field so does not exhibit the Appleton anomaly.
Observed Data - 2019-06-30T06:22:00UTC - 2019-07-02T22:520:00UTC
Global-scale Observations of the Limb and Disk (GOLD) is an ultraviolet imaging spectrograph to measure temperatures and densities in the Earth's thermosphere & ionosphere.
GCMD keywords can be found on the Internet with the following citation:
Olsen, L.M., G. Major, K. Shein, J. Scialdone, S. Ritz, T. Stevens, M. Morahan, A. Aleman, R. Vogel, S. Leicester, H. Weir, M. Meaux, S. Grebas, C.Solomon, M. Holland, T. Northcutt, R. A. Restrepo, R. Bilodeau, 2013. NASA/Global Change Master Directory (GCMD) Earth Science Keywords. Version 8.0.0.0.0