NASA astronaut Josh Cassada photographs the beautiful green aurora from space, to capture the impact of a solar storm hitting Earth. Photo/NASA/Josh Cassada
“Absolutely surreal,” tweeted NASA astronaut Josh Cassada on February 28, 2023 alongside a beautiful photo of a green aurora circling around Earth’s northernmost latitudes. Cassada took the images from the International Space Station (ISS), which orbits at an altitude of about 400 kilometers above Earth.
Auroras are known as the northern lights when they are seen in the Northern Hemisphere. Auroras are formed when charged particles emitted by the sun collide with different molecules in Earth’s atmosphere.
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Solar particles ionize the molecules, or remove electrons from them, causing them to glow. Ionized oxygen molecules emit the greenish neon glow we most often see from auroras.
“Nitrogen molecules emit a red or pink glow. Meanwhile, hydrogen and helium molecules release blue and purple light,” the Canadian Space Agency said as quoted from the Live Science page, Thursday (2/3/2023).
NASA astronaut Frank Rubio (right) gives the thumbs up and Josh Cassada (left) ahead of their November 2022 spacewalk. Behind is NASA astronaut Nicole Mann. Photos/NASA
Auroras are most commonly seen at high latitudes, as charged solar particles tend to magnify Earth’s magnetic field lines, which end at the North and South poles. However, when the sun ejects a very large plume of plasma called a coronal mass ejection (CME), it can produce larger and more widespread auroras that appear at much lower latitudes than usual.
