A Whale of an Aurora over Swedish Forest
Image Credit & Copyright:
Göran Strand
What's that in the sky?
An aurora.
A large
coronal mass ejection occurred on our Sun earlier this month,
throwing a cloud of fast-moving electrons, protons, and ions
toward the Earth.
Part of this cloud impacted our Earth's
magnetosphere
and, bolstered by a sudden gap, resulted in
spectacular auroras being seen at some high northern latitudes.
Featured here is a particularly photogenic
auroral corona captured above a forest in
Sweden
from a scenic perch overlooking the city of
Östersund.
To some,
this shimmering green
glow of
recombining atmospheric
oxygen
might appear like a large
whale, but feel free to
share what it looks like to you.
The unusually
quiet
Sun of the past few years has now passed.
As our Sun now approaches a
solar maximum in its
11-year solar magnetic cycle,
dramatic auroras like
this are sure to continue.