Aurora Base

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Lore & Background

This covert research and operations facility was established by the Pangalactic Federation to serve as a critical hub for scientific advancement and strategic defense. Hidden within a remote, icy region of a frontier planet, the base specializes in the study of ancient technologies, space-time phenomena, and the development of advanced weaponry. Its isolated location and state-of-the-art security make it a key asset for the Federation's most sensitive projects, though its existence is known only to a select few.

In Their Own Story

Auroras are most commonly observed in the "auroral zone", a band approximately 6° (~660 km) wide in latitude centred on 67° north and south. The region that currently displays an aurora is called the "auroral oval". The oval is displaced by the solar wind, pushing it about 15° away from the geomagnetic pole in the noon direction and 23° away in the midnight direction. Early evidence for a geomagnetic connection comes from the statistics of auroral observations. Elias Loomis (1860), and later Hermann Fritz (1881) and Sophus Tromholt (1881) in more detail, established that the aurora appeared mainly in the auroral zone. In northern latitudes, the effect is known as the aurora borealis or the northern lights. The southern counterpart, the aurora australis or the southern lights, has features almost identical to the aurora borealis and changes simultaneously with changes in the northern auroral zone. The aurora australis is visible from high southern latitudes in Antarctica, Patagonia, southeastern Australia, New Zealand, and the Falkland Islands. The aurora borealis is visible from areas around the Arctic such as Alaska, Canada, Iceland, Greenland, the Faroe Islands, Scandinavia, Finland, Scotland, and Russia. A geomagnetic storm causes the auroral ovals to expand, bringing the aurora to lower latitudes. On rare occasions, the aurora borealis can be seen as far south as the Mediterranean, East Asia, and the southern states of the US, while the aurora australis can be seen as far north as New Caledonia, South Africa, the Pilbara region in Western Australia, and Uruguay. During the Carrington Event, the greatest geomagnetic storm ever observed, auroras were seen even in the tropics.

Reader's Guide

Starting in 1911, Carl Størmer and his colleagues used cameras to triangulate more than 12,000 auroras. They found no auroras below 70 km and only 6.5% above 150 km, with a maximum in the height distribution around 100 km. According to Clark (2007), there are five main forms that can be seen from the ground, from least to most visible: a mild glow near the horizon; patches or surfaces that look like clouds; arcs curve across the sky; rays are light and dark stripes across arcs, reaching upwards by various amounts; coronas cover much of the sky and diverge from one point on it. Brekke (1994) also described some auroras as "curtains". The similarity to curtains is often enhanced by folds within the arcs. Arcs can fragment or break up into separate, at times rapidly changing, often rayed features that may fill the whole sky. These are also known as discrete auroras, which are at times bright enough to read a newspaper at night. Red auroral light comes from excited atomic oxygen emitting at 630 nm; green from the 557.7 nm emission; blue from molecular nitrogen and ionized molecular nitrogen, with 428 nm being dominant. White auroral emission has been observed in the colour spectrum of STEVE, and within the aurora in the oval and on the poleward edge.

Did You Know?

• The base's energy shield is powered by a highly experimental Symbological generator, though details of its operation remain classified.
• Only a handful of personnel are cleared to access the deepest sub-levels, which house sensitive research into space-time phenomena.
• No major conflicts have been directly tied to this facility, though its strategic value is widely acknowledged within the Federation.
• Rumors persist of a hidden AI within the base's systems, but no official records confirm such an entity's existence.

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