The northern lights are extremely rare, only occurring once every 20 years. Appears in the Arctic
This is something that has never been observed before from a terrestrial perspective, the scientist said. The so-called “rain aurora borealis” is a giant aurora, or northern lights, that lights up the Arctic sky in December 2018. 2022
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It was Christmas morning on the island of Svalbard. Norway A man held up his fisheye lens and pointed it at the bright green sky. This phenomenon is different from the usual northern lights, which are thin, swaying, snake-like structures moving under unique constellations, but the aurora borealis spreads across the sky like a surprisingly green blanket.
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“This is twilight[لديه]Very smooth shape. It was a building with only scattered green dots. “It was like a big green cake,” said Keisuke Hosokawa, a space physicist at the University of Electric Communications in Tokyo, Japan.
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This strange aurora borealis covered the Arctic sky on December 25 and 26, 2022. It is an extremely rare phenomenon. Hosokawa and his colleagues recently noted this in the journal Science Advances.
It rains in the Arctic
As you well know the aurora is the result of electron particles emitted from the sun's corona, the outer atmosphere of the star. They are then accelerated by the solar wind and collide with the Earth's magnetic field.
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In fact, these various high-energy particles from the solar wind don't have enough energy to create a typical aurora on Earth on their own. But when they are caught in the Earth's magnetic field and “exploded,” the electrons interact with atoms in our atmosphere. And the production of twilight light
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Such natural displays appear beautifully around the poles, but instead, “rain aurora borealis” are caused by little or no bursts of electrons during the solar wind. Such a new event in 2022.
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“(The incident) is an interesting example. “The poles appear to be filled with electrons coming directly from the solar corona,” said physicist David Knudsen of the University of Calgary in Canada, who was not involved in the study. “This is a very unusual event.”
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The aurora of the northern shower has been previously detected in satellite data. But ground cameras have never seen it on Earth's surface. Hosokawa noticed 2022 by chance after checking the aurora cameras weekly during his break. But when he examined the photos left over as a Christmas gift, he discovered a rare aurora.
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“When I saw strange aurora lights like these, I knew they were special. I had to do something. So, I started viewing data from satellites being received at the same time. I saw the uniqueness of the aurora borealis,” Hosokawa said.
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On days with no solar wind such an aurora is not only a direct result of relatively “weak” electrons traveling directly from the Sun, but is also a rare example of a 28-hour period with no solar wind at all. Instead, they create electrons in polar rain.
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Normally, the solar wind from the Sun's corona flows continuously out of the solar system. So it was strange that all the wind disappeared. But seeing the aurora invited Hosokawa to experiment “once every 20 years,” according to another record that mentions only one occasion in 2004, also observed from space.
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The lack of solar wind makes the auroras of polar rain particularly bright. And makes it easier to see from Earth Dual observations from Earth and space are important in understanding small details and larger patterns.
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Because the electrons that fall into the aurora borealis come directly from the sun. They therefore act like shadows or imprints of the environment from which they emerge. Hosokawa and his colleagues hope to use this data to understand the matter. The relationship between the arrival of electrons on Earth and their origin in the Sun's atmosphere.
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“The really exciting aspect of this paper is that this shows that there are still a lot of fundamental discoveries to be made.”
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“We now have a system of satellites and ground-based observatories that are helping us see for the first time a new way of connecting the Sun to the Earth.”
Researched and edited by Witit Borompichaichartkul
Origin
nationalgeographic.com
