For the third consecutive night, space enthusiasts from around the world have had the chance to admire magnificent multi-coloured auroras dancing in the skies across the Northern Hemisphere. These northern lights are a result of increased solar activity. FRANCE 24's Julia Sieger explains.
Visit our website:
http://www.france24.com
Like us on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/FRANCE24.English
Follow us on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/France24_en
Visit our website:
http://www.france24.com
Like us on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/FRANCE24.English
Follow us on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/France24_en
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00 Now for the past three nights a powerful solar storm put on a spectacular celestial light show
00:07 around much of the world. Social media lit up with people posting pictures of the auroras
00:11 from northern Europe all the way to Australasia. So to tell us a bit about what that light show
00:16 actually was is our science editor Julia Seager. And Julia look, first of all those images were
00:23 spectacular weren't they? But before you explain to us what this actually was just tell us did you
00:29 manage to see them yourself? I didn't I actually missed all of them I was so disappointed. I tried
00:34 to find you know a place away from the lights really with a clear view towards the north but
00:38 I wasn't able to see any of them. I should have looked longer because so many other people in the
00:42 northern hemisphere were able to catch that spectacular sight. This what you're seeing here
00:48 is actually the Mont Saint-Michel in Normandy. It's a tidal island and the pictures were absolutely
00:53 stunning but we actually saw also these northern lights at latitudes as low as Las Vegas in the
00:59 United States and there too it was quite spectacular and a lot of pictures were shared on
01:05 social media with people showing these northern lights as you can see here blue, violet,
01:12 spectacular indeed pictures and it happened for three days in a row which is a lot and it also
01:18 happened even yesterday in China. Okay spectacular indeed let's get into the science then what
01:24 actually are we looking at? So the northern lights are due to as you said the solar storms they're
01:29 also called geomagnetic storms and the ones that we're experiencing now are quite intense they're
01:34 level five which is the highest level and the reason why is because the sun has an activity
01:39 cycle and it peaks every 11 years and 2024 is actually a peak of solar activity and it's
01:45 actually going to reach its greatest peak this fall. So what actually and the reason why we can
01:51 actually see these northern lights at this these low latitudes is because of the intensity of the
01:56 storms. Now because usually of course those northern lights are usually seen only at the
02:01 poles the south and the north pole so what exactly happens? As you know they're on the surface of the
02:07 earth you have these solar storms so these are huge events very powerful events that are going to
02:11 unleash a lot of gas particles electrons that are then gonna of course travel with the solar wind
02:18 and they can take days to reach earth and when it does it collides with the earth's magnetic field
02:24 so here in blue and what happens then is that you have energy in the form of light that's going to
02:30 be created and then kind of like a funnel it's going to fall back along the magnetic the magnetic
02:35 lines and fall onto the poles first on on the side of the earth that is with light so the daytime and
02:44 then there's this boomerang effect that you can see here and it creates other auroras but this
02:49 time on the dark side that's the night side of the earth and this is how we can actually see those
02:54 auroras during the night. So this is an animation that you just saw that was created by the University
02:59 of Oslo and it really does help us to grasp exactly how it works but there's still so much
03:05 we don't actually understand about the northern lights. Do we know how those magnificent colors
03:10 appear in that way? They're so different right there's a huge palette of colors that are possible
03:14 and what scientists believe is that it's actually linked to the type of particles that collide with
03:18 each other so for instance if you have a lot of nitrogen the nitrogen particles of course the
03:24 northern lights are going to be more red blue violet if there's more oxygen it's more going
03:28 to be green and red and if there's more hydrogen and helium it's going to be a mix of violet and
03:34 blue. Now once again when I talk about this you may think that the scientific community knows a
03:38 lot about the northern lights but actually it's only since the development just recently of
03:43 scientific tools and space exploration that we were able to really measure solar wind particles
03:49 and I'm saying this but at the same time when you look at what scientists knew in the 17th century
03:53 they were already quite close to what we now understand of these northern lights.
03:57 Well that's pretty impressive and just finally Julie you're talking of course about what we can
04:01 see from planet earth what about extraterrestrial northern lights do they exist? Of course they do
04:07 because the sun of course is going to have an impact on all other planets and so we're going
04:12 to see those auroras on planets that have a magnetic field and an atmosphere so for instance
04:16 on Jupiter or on Mars and just recently we were able to capture an aurora on Mars in 2016 with a
04:23 spacecraft from NASA called a MAVEN and just recently through the Emirati mission on Mars
04:28 and what's really really cool is that we realised that these northern lights actually happen all
04:34 over the surface of Mars because it doesn't have Earth's magnetic field that works from
04:39 north to south but it has a magnetic field that touches the entire surface of Mars.
04:44 God what a spectacular thought we'd love to see that one day. Julia Seager thanks very much.