Creating Aurora-like phenomenon in a laboratory

Question

Is it possible to recreate Aurora's in a laboratory experiment? Obviously, I'm not asking if it's possible to have bands of plasma thousands of kilometers long inside a lab. But rather, is it possible to create a particle stream analogous to solar winds, and ionize low-pressure gas into a plasma using this artificial solar wind? If it is possible, has this been done before?

Answer 1

Certainly. Classroom demonstration tubes can be bought that create colored ionization patterns inside when connected to a high voltage DC source. By putting different gases into the vacuum in tiny amounts, and by varying the total pressure inside the tube, you get a variety of different colors. these are called glow discharge tubes. I watched while my science teacher demonstrated these to us in 1965.

Answer 2

Look into something called a Terella, which is what Birkeland used to correlate "cathode ray" (high energy electrons) trajectories with similar ring shaped footprints in the Ionosphere.