AURORA BOREALIS PAINTS THE SKY
A Life in Research Over Time
The Northern lights (or Aurora Borealis) glow and dance like moving curtains in the sky. They are generated when charged particles trapped in the earth's magnetic field slam into gases of the upper atmosphere. Scientists have been working for a century to understand and predict the appearance of these remarkable forms and colors.
Margaret Kivelson, Professor of Space Physics at the University of California, Los Angeles is the Principal Investigator for the magnetometer on the Galileo mission to Jupiter. She discovered that Jupiter's largest moon, Gammed, has its own magnetic field, unlike Earth's moon which is largely non-magnetic. As a young girl she was fascinated by the moon, the stars, and the elusive aurora. Her curiosity contributed to her becoming a scientist. |
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