This essay explores the nature and significance of the intersection of surrealist automatism and autobiography in the surrealist novel through an analysis of Aurora (1927–8; pub. 1946), by Michel Leiris, as compared with other surrealist novels such as Louis Aragon’s Anicet, or the Panorama (1921). Hoping to recover from a major emotional crisis, Leiris embarked upon a five-month trip to Egypt and Greece in 1927. Commenced during this journey, Aurora combines surrealist approaches with fictional and documentary elements in an investigation of the limits and fluid expanses of the writing self. How does automatism at once reinforce and obliterate the autobiographical source? In Aurora, surrealist automatism and elements of autobiography become epistemological demonstrations, via the words of the writer who is writing in real time, of the sheer fact of being alive and the possibility of impending death. Therefore, Aurora also experiments with thanatography, which is a written account of the death of the self. One way of understanding Aurora, Leiris asserts, is as a surrealist magnum opus, or account of the alchemical striving towards the creation of the philosopher’s stone recast as the surrealist path to greater awareness of a fundamentally unknowable, unbounded, and unstable self.

This chapter describes the Earth’s upper atmosphere including the ionosphere and its effect on radio propagation. The density and thermal structure of the neutral thermosphere is described with respect to energy deposition as a function of altitude and hydrostatic equilibrium determining the scale height. The structure of the partially ionized ionosphere is described as well as the physical process responsible for the aurorae. Supplements give more details on photochemistry that give rise to excited atoms and molecules that emit auroral photons.

In the nineteenth century, visual culture became noted for spectacles such as panoramas, which sought to create an experience that offered more than simply viewing an engraving or a framed painting. The panorama placed the spectator at the centre of a circle, surrounded by a huge painting on a curved surface. This chapter focuses on the Arctic panorama Summer and Winter Views of the Polar Regions (1850) that opened in London in 1850. The chapter explains how a radically transformed Arctic was presented to a metropolitan audience, which anticipated education, entertainment, and an aesthetic experience at Leicester Square, London. Summer and Winter Views was based on the drawings of a recently returned officer, William Henry Browne, and made claims of authenticity in a competitive market. By closely reading the sources available for the panorama, including sketches, contemporary reviews, and prints, it argues that this affordable and persuasive spectacle of ‘savage horrors’ transformed the Arctic into a supernatural space of well-executed, yet sensationalistic, Gothic icescapes, masculine endeavour, and exotic meteorological effects.

The ionosphere boundary between the magnetosphere and atmosphere is often considered thin in the magnetosphere-ionosphere-thermosphere system. This approximation is not valid at the inner boundary, where height variation is important in ionosphere-thermosphere (I-T) coupling, particularly with respect to momentum/energy transfer. Here the Cowling channel and energy coupling between regions are better modelled including altitude variations. In the equatorial region the equatorial plasma fountain results from a field perpendicular ExB drift and field aligned plasma diffusion, while the equatorial ionisation anomaly is formed by removal of equatorial plasma by upward ExB drift. Under magnetic storm conditions an eastward prompt penetration electric field and neutral winds contribute. The polar cap ionosphere and auroral zones transfer solar wind energy into the magnetosphere. In the polar cap key indicators for energy/momentum transfer to the solar wind I-T system are the cross-polar cap potential/electric field, and the relationship to the interplanetary magnetic field where linear and non-linear relationships may occur. Models have been produced to describe various aspects of the coupled system. In the auroral zones aurora are associated with different regions and processes; substorm-associated aurora, shock associated aurora, pulsation aurora, cusp aurora and mid-latitude aurora. These categories and recent models are referenced.

In the context of space weather effects, magnetosphere-ionosphere coupling is one of the fundamental processes controlling energy transfer and dissipation in geospace. Alfvén waves appear to play a key role in this coupling, specifically in coupling the dynamics of magnetospheric convection to the ionosphere and in generating the region 1 and region 2 global field-aligned current systems. The momentum transport from the magnetosphere to the ionosphere can be described as the result of the generation and propagation of Alfvén waves, for example as arising along newly reconnected magnetic field-lines, and in general in terms of their incidence on and reflection from the ionosphere. The thermosphere experiences dramatic changes in density and composition during magnetic storms. Intense Joule heating and particle precipitation at auroral latitudes cause intense thermal expansion, air upwelling and strong wind circulations. The Joule heating at E-layer altitudes can cause both density enhancements and depletions at higher altitudes, and complicate the interpretation of mass density anomalies at high latitudes. The thermospheric response to storms at middle and low latitudes is less complicated, where the averaged density enhancement is linearly proportional to the solar wind input. Magnetic substorms during active periods also cause mass density perturbations. Magnetic storms and substorms can cause disturbances up to thousands of nT at the Earth’s surface. The time derivative of the magnetic field provides a proxy for the associated geoelectric field, which can drive geomagnetically induced currents in Earthed conductors. The geoelectric field is thus a key quantity for space weather effects on technological systems such as power grids, and it can be obtained by modelling the magnetic field using ionospheric currents and model ground conductivity as inputs.