northern lights tagged posts

The same phenomenon that causes aurorae—the magical curtains of green light often visible from the polar regions of the Earth—causes mesospheric ozone layer depletion. This depletion could have significance for global climate change and therefore, understanding this phenomenon is important.

Now, a group of scientists led by Prof. Yoshizumi Miyoshi from Nagoya University, Japan, has observed, analyzed, and provided greater insight into this phenomenon. The findings are published in Nature’s Scientific Reports.

In the Earth’s magnetosphere—the region of...

An atmospheric light show previously relegated to planets and Jupiter moons is found on comet using data from ESA’s Rosetta spacecraft. Data from NASA instruments aboard the ESA (European Space Agency) Rosetta mission have helped reveal that comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko has its own far-ultraviolet aurora. It is the first time such electromagnetic emissions in the far-ultraviolet have been documented on a celestial object other than a planet or moon. A paper on the findings was released today in the journal Nature Astronomy.

On Earth, aurora (also known as the northern or southern light...

Working together with space researchers, Finnish amateur photographers have discovered a new auroral form...

Magnetic disturbances caused by phenomena like the northern lights can be tracked by a ‘social network’ of ground-based instruments, according to a new study from the University of Warwick.

The researchers, led by Professor Sandra Chapman from the University’s Department of Physics, have for the first time characterised the observations from over 100 ground based magnetometers in terms of a time-varying directed network of connections. They monitored the development of geomagnetic substorms using the same mathematics used to study social networks. The magnetometers ‘befriend’ one another when they see the same signal of a propagating disturbance.

The research, published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, o...