Dazzling space view of earth’s aurora: lights and stars competing for glory

People may already be in awe when watching the gorgeous aurora from the ground, but the International Space Station (International Space Station) recently shared photos of the aurora taken from space. It is even more more beautiful. A dazzling green light is seen above the vast surface of the ground, which complemented the golden light on the ground and the stars in the distance, like a super large light show.

The International Space Station shared 4 beautiful pictures of aurora over the surface on Twitter on January 24 . These photos are from the web photo album opened by NASA on Flickr.

As you can see from these photos, a very conspicuous green aurora appears between the city lights and the twinkling stars. Among them, the aurora and lights in the upper right photo are the brightest.

That photo was taken when the International Space Station was moving over Romania. The lights in the photo are from cities in Sweden and Finland, and the black area between these two Nordic countries is the Baltic Sea.

Aurora usually appears close to the North and South Pole. Those that appear near the North Pole are called the Northern Lights, and those that appear near the South Pole are called Southern Lights. Aurora can be seen more clearly at night, but they are actually caused by the sun.

NASA explained that when a solar storm comes towards the earth, some energy and tiny particles will drop below the magnetic field lines of the earth’s magnetic field at the north or south pole and enter the earth’s atmosphere.

These particles interact with gas molecules in the upper atmosphere, causing the gas molecules to release photons, which in turn produces beautiful aurora. If these particles touch oxygen, they will emit green and red aurora. If the interaction is nitrogen, the aurora will appear blue and purple.