Aurora Outburst
On Sunday night, a bright display of auroras erupted around the Arctic
Circle. Ole Salomonsen photographed the outburst behind
EISCAT's ionospheric
radar in Tromsø, Norway:
"After a long day of photographing whales at sea, I was looking forward
to relaxing in the evening, but Lady aurora invited me out, and I could not
resist," says Salomonsen. "After quickly getting new batteries and
memory cards for my camera, I went out hunting, this time for the magic emerald
light. The entire sky was filled with majestic moving green auroras. At times
there were 4 to 5 arcs stretching from east to west next to each other in the
sky. This was really amazing to watch!"
Bright auroras are often caused by CME impacts, but there was no CME on
Sunday. Instead, the interplanetary magnetic field (
IMF)
near Earth tilted south. This opened
a
crack in Earth's magnetosphere. Solar wind poured in to fuel the display.
No comments:
Post a Comment