Planetary scientist explains the phenomenon of the aurora borealis outside Earth

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The planetary scientist explains the phenomenon of the aurora borealis outside the planet, today, Sunday, June 5, 2022 02:03 pm

This phenomenon is named following the ancient Greek goddess of dawn, but the origin of the twilight is not divine but rather the result of strong solar winds that bombard the upper atmosphere of the Earth, when photons from this solar wind interact with atmospheric gases, they light up in bright colors and are pulled into wonderful shapes on the The length of Earth’s magnetic lines.

“Oxygen is red and green, and blue or purple is nitrogen,” JAXA planetary scientist James O’Donoghue told Live Science.

But is Earth the only place in the solar system where the aurora borealis can be seen?

It turns out that the aurora borealis is not unique to planet Earth, as it is also found on other celestial bodies, and this aurora borealis outside the planet takes on more beautiful and strange forms.

“When you look at other planets, the ground rules change,” Tom Stallard, a planetary astronomer at the University of Leicester in the UK, told Live Science. For example, a type of aurora recently discovered on Mars (known as a separate zigzag aurora) snakes halfway around the Red Planet, despite the fact that Mars only has incomplete magnetic field lines. Some auroras on Saturn are created by weather patterns, according to 2021 research published in Geophysical Research Letters. Like the planet itself, Uranus’ magnetic field tilts around its axis, causing auroras to take on complex shapes and shape in unexpected regions.

A 2017 study published in Nature found that the strongest auroras in the solar system occur on Jupiter, and that these intense bursts of electromagnetic radiation are up to 30 times stronger than those on Earth, but even with all that energy, you probably won’t be able to On seeing Jupiter’s twilight with the naked eye, most of its light is emitted at wavelengths outside the visible spectrum. “Infrared is the biggest emitter on Jupiter and Saturn, and then you have visible light, X-rays and radio too,” O’Donoghue said.

According to experts elsewhere in the solar system, the definition of aurora borealis collapses, usually it is believed that the aurora is the glowing electromagnetic glow caused by the solar wind that occurs in the atmosphere of the planet (or moon), but Mercury has no atmosphere to speak of, but it experiences magnetic storms. A ground that produces the aurora borealis.

“If you look at the night side of Mercury with an X-ray spectrometer, you’ll see the rocks on the surface glow with X-ray emissions, so it’s like a solid-state aurora, and the X-ray spectrometer detects high-frequency light waves and is an important tool in astronomy,” Stallard said.

According to NASA, the solar winds do not produce some of Jupiter’s auroras. Instead, they are created by particles emitted into the magnetosphere by the planet’s volcanic moon.

Scientists hope they can even look far enough into the universe to spot the first aurora borealis on exoplanets. Nobody knows what these light shows are in store for, but they’re sure to be amazing, Stallard said: ‘Every aurora borealis is fun and weird.

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