Tech News Update

Shimmering with an eerie green light, these astonishing pictures taken from space reveal the full beauty of the Northern and Southern Lights.The dazzling displays of charged particles were captured by astronauts on the International Space Station or during missions on board space shuttles.The luminescent waves of green and red waves were clearly visible miles outside the Earth’s atmosphere above the two polar regions.Astronauts used long exposure cameras with 35mm film to take these unique images from orbit around the planet.Aurora are created by the interaction between the Earth’s magnetic field and solar wind.Charged particles from the the magnetosphere, mostly electrons but also protons and heavier particles, collide with atoms and molecules from the upper atmosphere at altitudes above 50 miles, creating the distinctive ghostly lights.These collision ‘excite’ the electrons to take quantum leaps, which converts their energy into visible light.Most aurorae are green and red, created from atomic oxygen. Nitrogen can produce pink and blue or violet lights, helium gives off a purple colour and neon is responsible for rare orange flares.The level of solar wind activity from the Sun can also influence the colour and intensity of the aurorae.Named after the Roman goddess of dawn, Aurora, and the Greek for north wind Boreas, the Aurora Borealis, or Northern Lights, most often occurs from September to October and March to April and is only visible from the northern hemisphere.Its southern counterpart, the Aurora Australis – Latin for ‘of the south’ – is only visible from high latitudes in Antarctica, South America or Australasia.The lights, which have inspired books and films including Philip Pullman’s Northern Lights and the movie Frequency, are rarely photographed from above.Jupiter and Saturn, which have stronger magnetic fields than Earth, have both had aurorae observed on them through the Hubble Space Telescope.They have also been spotted on Uranus and Neptune.