Using digital SLRs to measure the height of Northern Lights

Scientific research doesn't often start from outreach projects. Yet, Ryuho Kataoka from the National Institute of Polar Research in Tokyo, Japan, came up with an idea for a new method to measure the height of aurora borealis after working on a 3D movie for a planetarium. Kataoka and collaborators used two digital single-lens reflex (SLR) cameras set 8 km apart to capture 3D images of Northern Lights and determine the altitude where electrons in the atmosphere emit the light that produces aurora. The results are published today in Annales Geophysicae, a journal of the European Geosciences Union (EGU).

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