An all‐sky‐camera format for radar auroral studies

Installation of a phased‐array antenna on a UHF radar located at Homer, Alaska, makes possible a variety of data presentations for studying the radar aurora. In this paper we describe a data handling procedure that permits rather direct comparison of radar auroral developments with optical auroral displays. The procedure involves coordinate transformation of digitized radar data to produce a display resembling an all‐sky‐camera photograph from a selected location beneath the radar's field of view in the E layer. We present here five representative case studies of auroral developments as displayed in the radar all‐sky‐camera format and simultaneously recorded by means of optical all‐sky cameras located in central Alaska (Fort Yukon and Chatanika).