Tag: magnetic field

Imagined aurora

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Still obsessed by not seeing the main auroras so I tried to imagine them and their spectacular colours. When you look at the incredible photos people have taken my rendition isn’t very exciting but I would have liked to see more than I did. Auroras are charged particles that follow the Earth’s magnetic field down to the poles. Without that magnetic shield we would be exposed to the radiation of space that would slowly deplete our atmosphere. Our magnetism is caused by Earth’s rotating molten core. Life on Earth is protected by it. Mars, a smaller planet has no magnetism and has lost its atmosphere because of this .

Awesome

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Today for #bandofsketchers we had to draw something ‘Awesome’. One thing I’ve always wanted to do is see the Aurora Borealis, northern lights. The electrons in the solar wind get trapped by Earth’s magnetic fields and get drawn to the north and south poles. There they are drawn down and they interact with the magnetic fields and great auroral lights illuminating the sky. The Southern lights are called the Aurora Australis.

Northern lights

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My digital doodle of the northern lights. A couple of days ago the sun threw off a medium sized Coronal Mass Ejection (CME). A plume of hot plasma which the Sun throws out every few days into space. This time it was a halo CME which was pointing directly at us on Earth.

The Sun releases plasma and radiation which can cause effects like auroras on Earth. Streams of electrons and ionised gas travel down the magnetic lines of force that surround the Earth in a protective layer. They hit out atmosphere and glow different colours depending on what atoms they excite.

Yesterday aurora were seen quite far down the longitude of the Northern hemisphere. It might happen again tonight. The sky glowed. I don’t live far enough north to be able to see it. One day I hope I do.

Most of this is written from memory after reading about the Northern lights. If you want more information please check out relevant websites like spaceweather.com