Locations of Auroral Kilometric Radiation Bursts Inferred From Multi-Spacecraft Wideband Cluster VLBI Observations i: Description of Technique and Initial Results

Abstract

The Cluster Wideband Data instrument has been used to determine the locations of auroral kilometric radiation (AKR) using very long baseline interferometry. The technique involves cross-correlating individual AKR bursts from all six Cluster baselines using time and frequency filtered waveforms. We report the locations of over 1,700 individual AKR bursts during six observing epochs between 10 July 2002 and 22 January 2003 when the Cluster constellation was high above the southern or northern hemisphere. In general we find that the AKR burst locations lie along magnetic field lines which map onto the nighttime auroral zone as expected from previous AKR studies. The distribution of AKR auroral footprint locations at each epoch had a overall spatial scale between 1000 - 2000 km, much larger than the positional uncertainty of an individual AKR burst location magnetic footprint, but a small fraction of the auroral oval. For two of the six epochs, there was a significant drift in the mean location of AKR activity over a period of 1-2 hours. The drift was predominantly in latitude at one epoch and in longitude at the other, with average drift speed V ~ 80-90 m s-1 at the AKR emission location.