Amazing red aurora captured by Space Station astronaut

By Miriam Kramer From Mashable

A NASA astronaut spending a full year in space has captured yet another amazing photo of auroras dancing above Earth.

One-year International Space Station crewmember Scott Kelly posted a new image of red and purple auroras over the dark planet on Twitter Saturday.

Astronauts on the Space Station have front-row seats to amazing displays of northern and southern lights. Crewmembers on the station are able to gaze down at the aurora from space without worrying about cloud cover blotting out their views of the light show.

The aurora display Kelly photographed may have been the result of a strong solar storm arriving at and bombarding Earth’s magnetic field on Saturday.

The solar storm — which hit the “strong” level on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Space Weather Prediction Center’s rating system for space weather — was caused by an explosion of solar plasma shot from the sun on Aug. 12.

Auroras occur when charged particles sent into space by the sun reach Earth. Those bits of solar material are drawn down, toward the poles of the planet along magnetic field lines. Some of the charged particles then collide with other particles in Earth’s upper atmosphere, causing them to glow a variety of colors.

This isn’t the first time Kelly and his fellow Space Station crewmembers have seen auroras from space. Kelly also caught sight of some amazing auroras during a major solar storm in June.

MAGE: Aurora from the International Space Station. IMAGE: SCOTT KELLY/NASA

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