Yellowknife (Jan 17/07) - Who among us has never gazed at the luminous wonder of the northern lights and wondered what they are.

A group of international scientists is launching a five-satellite project called THEMIS to delve into the mystery of the polar region's electromagnetic storms.

NASA and the Canadian Space Agency have teamed up to study aurora to learn, in depth, what causes the light show. - photo courtesy of NASA

"NASA will be launching five satellites from Cape Canaveral on Feb. 5, to coincide with the Canadian initiative of cameras set up and monitored by locals across the North to record the auroras," said Grady Semmens, media relations adviser for the University of Calgary.

THEMIS stands for Time History of Events and Macroscale Interactions during Substorms, and it's a two-year study of magnetospheric substorms, which are the root cause of aurora.

The storms are related to the full-blown space storms that wreak havoc on spacecraft, radio communications, GPS navigation and power systems, and add electrons to the radiation belts surrounding Earth.

Eric Donovan, one of the scientists involved in the project from the physics department at the University of Calgary, said Canada has a large role in the project.

"As part of THEMIS, the Canadian Space Agency has funded (us) to establish a network of ground-based observatories to record the aurora borealis across the Canadian Arctic," he said.

Donovan said that images captured from the ground cameras will be compared with information picked up by the satellites. For instance, if the ground camera captures the beginning of an aurora, the image can be sent to NASA to compare with any activity a satellite may have recorded occurring in space.

Mike Greffen, an employee of the physics department at the University of Calgary, was in charge of setting up cameras in 16 Canadian locations, beginning in 2004.

"There are three cameras in Manitoba, one in Newfoundland and three in the NWT, including Fort Simpson, Fort Smith and the Ekati Diamond mine," he said.

The cameras were made at Berkeley University in California, and have fish-eye lenses to capture a large swath of sky. They are also made of material that can withstand the drastic range of Arctic temperatures.