Sweden’s sky lights up with northern lights research

Scientists in Sweden placed on a lightweight present within the night time sky on Thursday, releasing materials from a sounding rocket to analysis the spectacular northern lights phenomena.

The northern lights, also referred to as aurora borealis or polar lights, seem as swathes of blue, inexperienced and purple lights flickering and dancing throughout the sky.

They will often be seen throughout the Arctic on clear nights.

Researchers on the Swedish Institute of House Physics despatched up the rocket from the Esrange House Middle within the nation’s far north, releasing supplies much like these in fireworks into the sky at an altitude of between 100-200 kilometers (62-124 miles).

Waves of greenish-white lights may very well be seen throughout the darkish sky simply after 1830 GMT above the northern Swedish city of Kiruna and inside a 200-kilometer radius.

Considerably much less spectacular than the actual northern lights, the experiment ended up blocking out an actual aurora borealis occurring naturally.

The experiment was a part of aurora analysis aimed toward serving to scientists enhance near-space climate forecasts to guard satellites and important infrastructures.

“Folks these days can not think about life with out GPS, with out TV, with out satellite TV, with out cell phones and so forth. And to have all of this, we have to perceive space climate,” Tima Sergienko, lead scientist of the experiment, advised AFP by phone earlier than the launch.

“In some circumstances when we have now sturdy ionic exercise, all these things may be destroyed attributable to space climate,” he defined.

Within the experiment, barium was launched from aluminum cylinders to create the impact.

Comparable experiments have been carried out all over the world for many years, however Sergienko famous that know-how and cameras have been way more superior now.

Researchers “can get way more data from such experiments and from optical measurements”, he stated.

© 2023 AFP