5 of the weirdest auroras

Pirjo Koski

A newly discovered kind of aurora named the “dunes” (horizontal green stripes of light pointing to the left) is just the latest addition to a menagerie of obscure types of northern and southern lights.

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A new type of aurora called the “dunes” appears as green stripes across the night sky. Scientists think these green lines mark the crests of atmospheric waves, where there’s a relatively high density of molecular oxygen. That oxygen glows green when it’s bombarded with electrons incoming from near-Earth space.

Pulsating aurora

These auroral lights are blinking patches of sky, up to hundreds of kilometers across, that rhythmically brighten and dim.

Trond Abrahamsen/Andøya Space Center

Cusp aurora

Near the North Pole and the South Pole, Earth’s magnetic field lines bend toward the ground, creating funnel-shaped “cusps” in the magnetosphere (blue in this illustration).

Solar wind particles that travel through these corridors to the atmosphere illuminate dim, red cusp auroras — although these midday auroras are visible only in extremely northern climes that are continuously dark in winter.

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NASA Goddard Space Flight Center/Flickr

The airglow known as STEVE is a mauve, east-to-west smear in the night sky. The source of that mauve ribbon is still a mystery.

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Credit & Copyright: Frank Andreassen (nettfoto.no)

Green and Black Aurora Over Norway

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Dragon wrote:

Pulsating aurora

These auroral lights are blinking patches of sky, up to hundreds of kilometers across, that rhythmically brighten and dim.

Absolutely stunning