Multispectral auroral imager and optical flow in aurora

Abstract: ”Auroral Structure and Kinetics” (ASK) is a multispectral auroral imager,developed and built by University of Southampton, UK, and Royal Institute ofTechnology, Sweden. The scientific objective of the instrument include characterisationof both high and low energy electron precipitation in aurora with highspatial and temporal resolution, and direct observation of plasma drifts in theionosphere. ASK consists of three cameras taking images in different spectrallines. One part of this thesis deals with the development of the data acquisitionsystem for the instrument. This included the hardware part (computers controllingthe cameras)and the software for operation of ASK. ASK was installedon Svalbard in November 2005, and examples of first data are presented. Thesecond part of the thesis treats the problem of estimation of motions from theauroral sequences. Robust optical flow estimation algorithm has been applied toauroral sequences, and new formulations specific to the imaging of metastableions (carried out by ASK) are suggested.