Dancing bands of green, red, and purple light periodically illuminate the night sky in the Arctic Circle and in the region around Antarctica, called the aurora borealis. The origin of the aurora is caused by strong solar winds bombarding the upper atmosphere of the Earth. When photons from this solar wind interact with atmospheric gases, they light up in bright colors and are drawn into wonderful shapes along the magnetic lines of the planet.
“Oxygen is red and green, and blue or purple is nitrogen,” said James O’Donogo, a planetary scientist at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). 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 these extraterrestrial aurora takes on more beautiful and exotic forms.
“When you look at other planets, the ground rules change,” said Tom Stallard, a planetary astronomer at the University of Leicester in the UK. 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 aurora borealis on Saturn are generated by weather patterns.”
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 as well,” O’Donogo explained.
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 a planet (or moon), but Mercury has no atmosphere to speak of, but it does face storms. Geomagnetism produces the aurora borealis.
