Aurora over Icelandic Fault
Explanation:
Admire the beauty but fear the beast.
The beauty is the
aurora overhead,
here taking the form of great green
spiral, seen between picturesque clouds with
the bright Moon to the side and stars in the background.
The beast is the wave of charged particles that creates the
aurora but might, one day, impair civilization.
Exactly this week in 1859,
following notable auroras seen all across the globe,
a pulse of charged particles from a
coronal mass ejection
(CME) associated with a
solar flare
impacted Earth's
magnetosphere
so forcefully that they created the
Carrington Event.
A relatively direct path between
the Sun and the Earth might have been cleared by a preceding
CME.
What is sure is that the Carrington Event compressed the
Earth's
magnetic field so violently that
currents were created in telegraph wires so great that many wires sparked and
gave
telegraph operators shocks.
Were a
Carrington-class event to impact the Earth today, speculation holds that
damage
might occur
to global power grids and electronics on a scale never yet experienced.
The featured aurora was imaged last week over
Thingvallavatn Lake
in
Iceland,
a lake that partly fills a fault that
divides
Earth's large Eurasian and North American
tectonic plates.
Free Download:
APOD 2017 Calendar: NASA Images
Authors & editors:
Robert Nemiroff
(MTU) &
Jerry Bonnell
(USRA)
NASA Web Site Statements, Warnings,
and Disclaimers
NASA Official: Jay Norris.
Specific
rights apply.
A service of:
LHEA at
NASA /
GSFC
& Michigan Tech. U.
