NASA unveils first 'astonishing' images of huge Sun eruptions that cause Northern Lights
The Northern Lights are a huge spectacle in Scotland. We are one of a few lucky countries to experience the glorious phenomenon, with the best times being in March - April and September - October.
The Northern Lights occur when charged particles from the sun collide with atmospheric gases near Earth's magnetic poles, emitting light at various wavelengths and painting the sky with a range of colours.
In others words, the stunning colours in the sky is the result of coronal mass ejections (CMEs), which occur when solar particles enter Earth's atmosphere.
These ejections, typically composed of nitrogen and other gases, emit the vibrant and luminous lights known as the aurora borealis when they burn up in the atmosphere.
Now, NASA has released its first images of these large solar eruptions so we can see how it all happens up close.
And they are pretty incredible.
"These first images are astonishing, but the best is still yet to come,' said Craig DeForest, principal investigator from Southwest Research Institute's Solar System Science and Exploration Division in Boulder, Colorado.
"Once the spacecraft are in their final formation, we'll be able to routinely track space weather in 3D across the entire inner solar system."
The CME can be seen rising in the centre of the image, above the blocked-out Sun.
The images were presented at the 246th American Astronomical Society meeting in Anchorage, Alaska this week.
Stitched into a video, the snaps show giant CMEs growing as they travel across the inner solar system.
In the video above, the first CME appears as an expanding "halo" around the Sun.
The white dashes represent the view of an earlier coronagraph still used to forecast space weather.
Later, the impact on Earth is visible as an abrupt brightening caused by the aurora takes place.
For the star gazers among us, the new images show Venus, Jupiter, several constellations including Orion, and the Pleiades star cluster. The Moon can also be seen in the sequence of images.
The images were taken with four cameras which work together as a single "virtual instrument" and captured the whole CMEs as they evolved in space in much greater detail than previously possible.
Three Wide Field Imagers, which observe the faint, outermost portion of the Sun's atmosphere and solar wind (the continual stream of charged particles from the Sun), work with a Narrow Field Imager (NFI), a coronagraph which allows scientists to see details in the Sun's atmosphere by blocking out the bright light of the Sun itself.
NASA will make continuous 3D observations of the Sun's outer atmosphere and the inner solar system so scientists can understand and predict space weather, which is driven by CMEs and can disrupt communications, endanger satellites and create Auroras, according to experts.
This could help Scots get more accurate predictions about when the Northern Lights should appear overhead.
From a space point of view, explorers will gain greater insight into how it impacts their other-worldly travels.
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