A rare aurora has been seen from Earth for the first time. It’s the “polar rain” aurora that produced a strange green glow. The image was captured by a camera in Norway.
Bright green aurora PHOTO: Getty Images
US and Japanese researchers determined that the aurora, which did not move and had no discernible pattern, was the result of a “torrential rains” of electrons channeled from the sun.
The aurora was observed over the Arctic in 2022 and was the result of a “storms” of electrons coming directly from the sun, say Japanese and American researchers, according to Live Science.
To solve the mystery, a team led by Keisuke Hosokawa of the Center for Space Science and Radio Engineering at Tokyo Electro-Communication University compared this aurora with what satellites of the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) saw . DMSP is operated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the US Space Force on behalf of the US Department of Defense.
The decrease in solar winds allowed “an intense flow of electrons” to reach the atmosphere, creating the aurora borealis, the research paper on the findings says. The stream of charged particles traveled from the sun to Earth, being caught in its magnetic field, nypost notes.
It was the first time such an aurora had been observed from Earth’s surface, which is why it took so long for researchers to determine what actually happened.
It’s the first time such a rare aurora has been seen from the ground, and it comes at a time when the solar wind gusts have all but disappeared.
Satellites viewed the aurora from above, noting that it had all the hallmarks of a rare type of named aurora “polar rain auroras”, which had only been seen from space before.
