Auroral Storm over Lapland
On some nights the sky is the best show in town.
On this night,
auroras ruled the sky, and the
geomagnetic storm that created this
colorful sky show originated from an
increasingly active Sun.
Surprisingly, since the approaching
solar CME the day before had missed the Earth,
it was not expected that this storm would create auroras.
In the foreground, two happily surprised
aurora hunters contemplate the amazing and rapidly changing sky.
Regardless of forecasts, though,
auroras were reported in the night skies of Earth not only in the far north, but as far south as
New Mexico,
USA.
As captured in a wide-angle image above
Saariselkä in northern
Finnish
Lapland,
a bright aurora was visible with an unusually high degree of detail, range of colors, and breadth across the sky.
The vivid yellow, green, red and purple
auroral colors are caused by
oxygen and
nitrogen atoms high in
Earth's atmosphere reacting to incoming
electrons.