# NASA Spacecraft Uncover Mystery Behind Auroral Beads fwE02OBWoKQ

A special type of aurora, draped east-west across the night sky like a glowing pearl necklace, is helping scientists better understand the science of auroras and their powerful drivers out in space. Known as auroral beads, these lights often show up just before large auroral displays, which are caused by electrical storms in space called substorms. Until now, scientists weren’t sure if auroral beads are somehow connected to other auroral displays as a phenomenon in space that precedes substorms, or if they are caused by disturbances closer to Earth’s atmosphere.

But powerful new computer models, combined with observations from NASA’s Time History of Events and Macroscale Interactions during Substorms – THEMIS – mission, have provided the first direct evidence of the events in space that lead to the appearance of these beads and demonstrated the important role they play in our local space environment.

Read more: https://www.nasa.gov/feature/aurora-mysteries-unlocked-with-nasa-s-themis-mission

Music: “Intrigues and Plots” and “Repetitive Motion” by Laurent Dury \[SACEM\] from Universal Production Music

Video credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center Joy Ng (USRA): Lead Producer Mara Johnson-Groh (SESDA): Producer Kareem Sorathia (JHUAPL): Scientist Slava Merkin (JHUAPL): Scientist Evgeny Panov (OAW): Scientist

This video is public domain and along with other supporting visualizations can be downloaded from NASA Goddard's Scientific Visualization Studio at:…

- Kind: Short
- Year: 2020
- Runtime: 2 min
- By: NASA Goddard
- Genres: Space, Mystery
- Archive: [Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:NASA_Spacecraft_Uncover_Mystery_Behind_Auroral_Beads_fwE02OBWoKQ.webm)
- Licence or status: Public domain (as the archive states it)
- Credit: NASA Goddard
- Who can watch: Teens profiles and older (the archive gives no rating; placed by Invisible Network from its collection and subjects)

[Watch now](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/watch/archive/commons/96292800?play=1)