‘Violent mass of fast-moving plasma’ was spat out by the sun in the form of a massive solar storm, what is called the Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) by the European Space Agency. The CMEs have delivered the stunning multi-colored auroras (light show) on Earth, despite them hampering the communication and GPS systems.
Spotted by CNET, ESA published a short video of the same, which consists of the beautiful purple lights that are most clearly visible in the intense magnitude of geomagnetic storms. ESA says that it took days for the Solar storm to reach the Earth’s surface after the sun ejected the plasma into space.
From the images of the intense aurora activities taken every minute on October 12, from the all-sky camera in Kiruna, Sweden. The cameras consist of a lens that is fish-eye to see complete horizon to horizon view of the sky.
The video published by the ESA has playback speed half the normal speed of the video so that the auroral motion is highly visible. This auroral motion consists of green swilling that is formed by the collision of energy particles of the solar system with the oxygen present on Earth. Due to the light green range of the electromagnetic spectrum is seen.
And later we observe in the video that when the ionic nitrogen collides with the energy particles then we see the purple aurora. It is a complex topic to understand these hazardous interactions between space and the Earth, but are beautiful and worth watching.
“The movement of the auroral motion in space with changing time is referred to as aurora dynamics and it is due to the inbuilt relationship between ionosphere and magnetosphere that is connected by the magnetic lines,” says, Hannah Laurens, RHEA Space Weather Applications Scientist based at ESOC.
“Aurora is a complex manifestation of the operation occurring in the magnetosphere, and this is also the reason for it being so beautiful and useful tool to look for the weather conditions in space.”
In 2027, the year will see the launch of the one of its kind mission of monitoring the sun from a far-off distance. Studying the sun would help us get a prior warning about the hazardous actions before they are viewed from Earth.