|
|
|
The following table contains links to nearly all the NASA Spaceweather.com Aurora Gallery pages I've located. If you know of additional ones, please send me the URLs.
|
|
|
What causes auroras, and the colors? They start at the Sun as a Coronal Mass Ejection which fires a mass of highly charged particles into space. Watch a neat time lapse photo animation of a CME taken from a Sun-watching satellite; this one has 4 in a 24-hr period. When one of those is aimed in our direction, the particles might trigger aurora.
Read Nature's Color TV (scroll down a bit) and the yellow side bar (click the diagram for a more extensive explanation) of what happens when the ejecta reaches Earth. Also these very non-technical explanations of magnetosphere and plasma. Photos, with stories, of our magnetosphere: 1, 2.
What are Coronas, Bands, Curtains, Rays? Terminology and Diagrams of aurora structures.
All photos, animations, movies on this and linked pages are copyrighted by the photographers and/or their employers or assigns.
This page last updated 10 August 2004
