Аскаплоты советских станций за 1980 год : (оперативно-информационный материал) / Акад. наук СССР, Кол. фил. им. С. М. Кирова, Поляр. геофиз. ин-т. – Апатиты : Кольский филиал АН СССР, 1984.

10 World Data Center TOC B2 located in Apatity (address: Auroral Subcenter, Polar Geophysical Institute, Kola Eranch of the USSR Academy of Sciences, 184200 Apatity Murmansk region, USSR). ' Methods of ascaplotting. The information about aurorae for every station according to /1,2/ in encoded in 5 lines divided by vertical lines. One vertical dividing corresponds to a half-an-hour interval centered to the beginning and the middle of each hour (UT). The local geomagnetic midnight is marked by a circle under the ascaplots. Three upper lines show aurorae location in the sky. The upper blackened line demonstrates that in a given half-an-hour interval aurorae were observed within the scale of zenith angles from 60° to 80° N. The second blackened line corresponds to aurorae .in the zenith (from 60° N to 60° S) and the third one shows aurorae in the south (from 60° to 80° S). Occurence of aurorae in the corresponding part of the sky was marked when an aurora was observed during one minute in a given time interval. The aurora location was defined by its bottom edge. Suppose that the height of the lower edge equals to 100 km then we get that all three zenith angle intervals have approximately sufficient extent along the meridian corresponding to 3 degrees of latitude. Thus, ascaplots give information on spatial distribution of aurorae in 9-degree-latitude range with its center in the zenith of the station. It should be taken into account that the sensitivity of all- sky cameras is maximum for the zenith and it diminishes when the zenith angle increases. The presence of stars on the films makes it possible to Judge on meteorological conditions in every latitude interval. According to /1,2/ the dot in the middle of the square shows weak cloudiness or cloudiness with rents in the given part of the sky and in the given time-interval. The vertical line denoted complete cloudiness. The tick inside the square of the third line points to bad quality of an ascafilm caused by some technical reasons (inaccurate focusing, poor quality of development etc.). The horizontal line denotes that no observations were carried out. To mark moon lighting which sufficiently reduces the quality of ascafilms we used an addit ional designation, i.e. the horizontal line over the ascaplot. Two bottom lines of squares carry the information about aurora activity. Blackening of the very bottom line means that 2 ball aurora was observed. Blacken ing of two bottom lines refers to 3 ball aurora activity. It s h o u M b e noted that the activity in ascaplots does hot entirely coincide with brightness of forms. The ball of activity also includes such parameters as the type of the form and its life-time within the given half-an-hour interval. Since the compreeion of the angle range for north and south does not permit similar determinations of peculiarities of auroral forms, the aurora activity in ascaplots waa estimated only for the zenith region. The series of aurora activity, which waa offered in /9/, characterizing the connection between the substorm phase and substorm Intensity, on one hand, and the type of the form, on the other, was taken as a basis. The table for estimating the activity is given in Figure 2. Here the balls of activity are marked at the bottom, horizontal lines denote the types of forms (corresponding to the international classification) as well as brightness of forms (W - weak, M - mean, В - bright). Two circles denote duration of observations, the left circle means that the observation period was more than 15 min shorter than that denoted by the right circle. The indices by which the balls of activity are calculated are given at the top of the Table. Indioes 1-3 correspond to the first ball, whereas indices 4-6 and 7-9 correspond to the second and third ball, respectively. For several forms