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Credit & Copyright: Mia Stölnacke
Explanation:
It appeared, momentarily, like a 50-km tall banded flag.
In mid-March of 2015, an energetic
Coronal Mass Ejection
directed toward a clear magnetic channel to Earth led to one of the more intense
geomagnetic storms of recent years.
A visual result was wide spread
auroras being seen over many countries near
Earth's magnetic poles.
Captured over Kiruna,
Sweden, the
image features
an unusually straight
auroral curtain with the
green color
emitted low in the
Earth's atmosphere, and red many kilometers higher up.
It is unclear where the rare
purple aurora originates,
but it might involve an unusual
blue aurora at an even lower altitude than the green,
seen superposed with a much higher red.
Now past
Solar Minimum, colorful
nights
of
auroras over Earth are likely to increase.
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NASA Official: Jay Norris. Specific rights apply.
A service of: LHEA at NASA / GSFC
& Michigan Tech. U.
Based on Astronomy Picture
Of the Day
Publications with keywords: aurora
Publications with words: aurora
See also:
- APOD: 2025 January 7 Á A New Years Aurora and SAR Arc
- APOD: 2024 December 8 Á Aurora around Saturns North Pole
- APOD: 2024 October 16 Á Colorful Aurora over New Zealand
- APOD: 2024 October 13 Á Aurora Timelapse Over Italian Alps
- Northern Lights, West Virginia
- Aurora Australis and the International Space Station
- APOD: 2024 June 26 Á Timelapse: Aurora, SAR, and the Milky Way