An explosion of extraordinarily uncommon pink auroras not too long ago lit up the night time sky above Norway after a solar storm slammed into Earth and ripped a gap within the planet’s magnetic subject. The breach enabled extremely energetic solar particles to penetrate deeper into the environment than regular, triggering the weird coloured lights.
The beautiful mild present was noticed Nov. 3 by a tour group led by Markus Varik, a northern lights tour information from the Greenlander tour company (opens in new tab) primarily based close to Tromsø in Norway. The colourful auroras emerged at round 6 p.m. native time and lasted for round 2 minutes, Varik told Live Science in an electronic mail.
“These have been the strongest pink auroras I’ve seen in additional than a decade of main excursions,” Varik stated. “It was a humbling expertise.”
The pink auroras emerged shortly after a small crack appeared within the magnetosphere — an invisible magnetic field surrounding Earth that’s generated by the planet’s fluid metallic core. Scientists detected the breach after a minor G-1 class solar storm slammed into Earth on Nov. 3, in response to Spaceweather.com (opens in new tab).
Associated: Do extraterrestrial auroras occur on other planets? (opens in new tab)
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Auroras are shaped when streams of extremely energetic charged particles, often called solar wind, move across the magnetosphere. The planet’s magnetic subject protects us from cosmic radiation, however the defend is of course weaker on the North and South Poles, which permits the solar wind to skim by the environment — often between 62 and 186 miles (100 and 300 kilometers) above Earth’s floor. As solar particles move by the environment, they superheat gases, which then vibrantly glow within the night time sky, according to NASA (opens in new tab).
Auroras mostly seem inexperienced, as a result of oxygen atoms, that are plentiful within the a part of the environment that solar wind usually reaches, emit that hue when they’re excited. Nonetheless, throughout the latest solar storm, the crack in Earth’s magnetosphere enabled the solar wind to penetrate beneath 62 miles, the place nitrogen is probably the most plentiful gasoline, in response to Spaceweather.com. Because of this, the auroras gave off a neon pink glow because the supercharged particles smashed principally into nitrogen atoms.
The crack in Earth’s magnetosphere additionally helped to generate robust inexperienced auroras all through the night time, Varik stated.
The magnetosphere gap closed round 6 hours after it first opened. Throughout this time, a wierd ribbon of blue mild additionally emerged within the skies above Sweden, the place it hung immobile within the sky for round half-hour, in response to Spaceweather.com (opens in new tab).
Nonetheless, specialists are not sure if this uncommon phenomenon was some never-before-seen kind of aurora brought on by the compromised magnetosphere, or if it was the results of one thing else. One professional urged that the ribbon might have been made up of frozen gas from a Russian rocket, however no rockets have been noticed within the space, in response to Spaceweather.com.
