March 25th, 2009, 01:04 AM
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biocryptologist
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Join Date: May 2005
Location: New Zealand
Posts: 1,091
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Jeff
Oooo, that's good, very good. Which for some reason led me to wonder why NASA has never published pictures of it from above. You have to be below the atmosphere to see it, maybe?
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Quote:
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The IMAGE satellite captured this view of the aurora australis (southern lights) on September 11, 2005, four days after a record-setting solar flare sent plasma—an ionized gas of protons and electrons—flying towards the Earth. The ring of light that the solar storm generated over Antarctica glows green in the ultraviolet part of the spectrum, shown in this image. The IMAGE observations of the aurora are overlaid onto NASA’s satellite-based Blue Marble image. From the Earth’s surface, the ring would appear as a curtain of light shimmering across the night sky.
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