{"id":3876,"date":"2015-04-08T07:04:26","date_gmt":"2015-04-08T07:04:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/revoscience.com\/en\/?p=3876"},"modified":"2015-04-08T07:04:26","modified_gmt":"2015-04-08T07:04:26","slug":"colourful-cosmic-curtains","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/colourful-cosmic-curtains\/","title":{"rendered":"Colourful Cosmic Curtains"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Colourful_cosmic_curtains_node_full_image_2\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Description<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

This dramatic panorama shows a colourful, shimmering auroral curtain reflected in a placid Icelandic lake. The image was\u00a0taken on 18 March 2015<\/span><\/a>\u00a0by Carlos Gauna, near J\u00f6kuls\u00e1rl\u00f3n Glacier Lagoon in southern Iceland.<\/span><\/p>\n

The celestial display was generated by a coronal mass ejection, or CME \u2013 a massive eruption on the Sun \u2013 on 15 March. A flotilla of Sun-watching spacecraft, including the\u00a0SOHO<\/span><\/a>\u00a0observatory and\u00a0Proba-2<\/span><\/a>, watched as millions of tonnes of magnetically charged particles were blasted into space, in the direction of Earth.<\/span><\/p>\n

Sweeping across the inner Solar System at some 3 million km per hour, the eruption reached Earth, 150 million kilometres away, in only two days. The gaseous cloud collided with Earth\u2019s magnetic field at around\u00a004:30 GMT on 17 March<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

At first,\u00a0the impact\u00a0sparked a relatively mild geomagnetic storm, but the magnetic disturbance intensified until it became the strongest storm of the current solar cycle. This increase occurred because the effects of the CME were reinforced by the arrival of a fast-moving stream of particles in the solar wind.<\/span><\/p>\n

The increase in global geomagnetic activity released energy into the atmosphere, which resulted in the creation of a marvellous, widespread display of the aurora borealis \u2013 the Northern Lights.<\/span><\/p>\n

When the charged particles from the Sun penetrate Earth\u2019s magnetic shield, they are channelled downwards along the magnetic field lines until they strike atoms of gas high in the atmosphere. Like a giant fluorescent neon lamp, the interaction with excited oxygen atoms generates a green or, more rarely, red glow in the night sky, while excited nitrogen atoms yield blue and purple colours.<\/span><\/p>\n

Normally, the best place to see these impressive displays is inside the \u2018auroral oval\u2019, which lies at around 65\u201370\u00ba north or south of the equator, encircling the polar caps. As this beautiful image shows, Iceland is a prime site for observing the Northern Lights.<\/span><\/p>\n

Auroral displays are not just decorative distractions. They are most frequent when the Sun\u2019s activity nears its peak roughly every 11 years. At such times, the inflow of high-energy particles and the buffeting of Earth\u2019s magnetic field may sometimes cause power blackouts, disruption of radio communications, damage to satellites and even threaten astronaut safety. For more than a decade, ESA\u2019s quartet of\u00a0Cluster<\/span><\/a>\u00a0spacecraft has been unveiling the secrets of this complex Sun\u2013Earth connection.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Description This dramatic panorama shows a colourful, shimmering auroral curtain reflected in a placid Icelandic lake. The image was\u00a0taken on 18 March 2015\u00a0by Carlos Gauna, near J\u00f6kuls\u00e1rl\u00f3n Glacier Lagoon in southern Iceland. The celestial display was generated by a coronal mass ejection, or CME \u2013 a massive eruption on the Sun \u2013 on 15 March. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":3878,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[42,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3876","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-feature","category-space-news"],"featured_image_urls":{"full":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/Colourful_cosmic_curtains_node_full_image_2.jpg",700,356,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/Colourful_cosmic_curtains_node_full_image_2-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/Colourful_cosmic_curtains_node_full_image_2-300x152.jpg",300,152,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/Colourful_cosmic_curtains_node_full_image_2.jpg",700,356,false],"large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/Colourful_cosmic_curtains_node_full_image_2.jpg",700,356,false],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/Colourful_cosmic_curtains_node_full_image_2.jpg",700,356,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/Colourful_cosmic_curtains_node_full_image_2.jpg",700,356,false],"ultp_layout_landscape_large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/Colourful_cosmic_curtains_node_full_image_2.jpg",700,356,false],"ultp_layout_landscape":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/Colourful_cosmic_curtains_node_full_image_2.jpg",700,356,false],"ultp_layout_portrait":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/Colourful_cosmic_curtains_node_full_image_2.jpg",600,305,false],"ultp_layout_square":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/Colourful_cosmic_curtains_node_full_image_2.jpg",600,305,false],"newspaper-x-single-post":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/Colourful_cosmic_curtains_node_full_image_2.jpg",700,356,false],"newspaper-x-recent-post-big":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/Colourful_cosmic_curtains_node_full_image_2.jpg",550,280,false],"newspaper-x-recent-post-list-image":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/Colourful_cosmic_curtains_node_full_image_2.jpg",95,48,false],"web-stories-poster-portrait":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/Colourful_cosmic_curtains_node_full_image_2.jpg",640,325,false],"web-stories-publisher-logo":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/Colourful_cosmic_curtains_node_full_image_2.jpg",96,49,false],"web-stories-thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/Colourful_cosmic_curtains_node_full_image_2.jpg",150,76,false]},"author_info":{"info":["Amrita Tuladhar"]},"category_info":"Feature<\/a> Space\/ AstroPhysics<\/a>","tag_info":"Space\/ AstroPhysics","comment_count":"0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3876","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3876"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3876\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3878"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3876"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3876"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3876"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}