Illuminating the night with curtains of light: the aurora borealis seen from above and below

By Tom Yulsman | April 15, 2019 4:07 pm



The Suomi NPP satellite captured this image of the aurora borealis while orbiting over North America on March 28, 2019. Please click on the image to view it full size. (Source: NASA Earth Observatory)

I’ve been meaning to write a story about the aurora borealis ever since I captured photos of an astonishing display in January when I was visiting Tromsø, Norway to cover the Arctic Frontiers conference. Finally, the satellite image above offered the perfect excuse.

It was captured by the Suomi NPP spacecraft as it orbited above North America on March 28, 2019. The spacecraft has a nighttime sensor that can capture relatively faint emissions of light under varying illumination conditions, including city lights and aurorae like those seen in the image above.

Auroral displays occur when Earth’s magnetic bubble, called the magnetosphere, is roiled by material flowing outward from the Sun. These can come from gusts of particles in the solar wind, or from more explosive emissions of plasma and magnetic energy caused by a phenomenon called coronal mass ejections.

The March 28 aurora resulted from relatively minor gusts of solar wind that knocked loose electrons and protons within the magnetosphere. Following Earth’s magnetic field lines toward the poles, these particles rained down on the atmosphere and caused it to glow. (For more about the March 28 event, see this article from NASA’s Earth Observatory: Dazzling Spring Aurora Over Hudson Bay.)

More:
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/imageo/2019/04/15/the-aurora-borealist-seen-from-space-and-the-ground/#.XQRsdohKjIU