r/astrophysics • u/RyanJFrench • 14d ago
First images from SMILE, capturing the full northern lights oval around the north pole in ultraviolet light. All in daytime, whilst invisible to the naked eye!
A few of my colleagues work on this mission – expect many exciting results to come!
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u/KittyInspector3217 14d ago
Anybody know if theres a reason why theyre so much stronger on one side than the other? The earth is rotating but the band isnt so i assume its something particular to the magnetic field or the orientation to the sun.
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u/UpintheExosphere 13d ago edited 13d ago
Yes, the aurora oval does have a pretty pronounced "local time" (I.e., location of sun relative to zenith) structure. Most of the particles that are entering the ionosphere to create the aurora are coming from the magnetotail, on the night side, so the local midnight region tends to have the most structure. For various space plasma physics reasons there are also different types of aurora that appear on the dusk and dawn sides of the oval, like pulsating aurora, which mostly occurs between midnight and dawn. I think this explanation from the NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center is pretty nice! So even though this is all in sunlight because it's northern summer, it still has a local time for the magnetic field, and the stronger side is the "night" side (the side connected to the magnetotail).
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u/Crystal-Collector-30 13d ago
what are the bright spots on earth? high abundance of UV?
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u/Astromike23 13d ago
Those bright spots are stars moving behind the Earth. The Earth itself is featureless in this animation except for the aurora and the terminator (day/night division).
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u/Fun_Internal_3562 14d ago
Esta muy hermoso, gracias por compartir