Aurora's Ring
Credit & Copyright:
Trygve Lindersen
Gusting solar winds
and blasts of charged particles from the Sun
made the early days of October rewarding ones for
those anticipating auroras.
While out enjoying the stormy
space weather
from Toemmeraas, Norway, Trygve Lindersen recorded this
picturesque apparition
of the northern lights with a digital
camera on October 6.
From this perspective, the curtains of green light formed a ring
which seemed to
hover,
wraithlike, just above the foreground trees.
But the ring of light was actually 100 kilometers or more
above the trees
and the greenish glow produced by oxygen molecules
interacting with energetic electrons and fluorescing near
the edge of space.
After days of enchanting
auroral displays
on planet Earth,
the solar activity which triggered October's
geomagnetic storms
seems to have subsided ... for now.