An Astronaut Documents The Northern Lights From Space

May 11, 2020 by apost team

On 15 September 2017, ESA astronaut Paolo Nespoli took 711 photos to create a timelapse of the Aurora Borealis, also known as The Northern Lights. It was his third flight to the Space Station as part of a barter agreement between NASA and Italy's ASI space agency.

The Aurora Borealis, famously known as the Northern Lights, sometimes known by other names, like “Polar Lights” is a natural light display primarily seen in high-latitude regions like the Arctic and Antarctic. According to the ESA, auroras occur when particle radiation from the Sun is channeled by Earth’s magnetic field into the polar regions and hits Earth’s upper atmosphere, making it glow in a greenish-blue light.

They take place during the winter months in places above the equator (Northern Hemisphere) when particles of solar wind interact with the Earth’s atmosphere, causing a beautiful sight in where green, purple and red lights drape across the sky.

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Deep inside the core of the sun is the energy needed to make this process possible. According to NASA, inside the core of the sun, the temperature reaches 14 million degrees. The pressure is so dense, that hydrogen atoms form into another element, helium. This nuclear reaction emits energy. Light radiates outward from the core of the sun, and on the outer layers, heat moves to the surface in swirls creating convection cells.

These convection cells are electrical currents of charged gas that create magnetic fields inside the sun. In certain places on the sun, magnetic fields push their way to the surface; they slow down these swirls of hot gas, cooling down parts of the surface. Dark sunspots appear once the surface cools during this time. The electrically charged gas is called plasma. The plasma pulls the magnetic field outwards from the surface of the sun, the field stretches outward, eventually breaking apart.

BBC Earth explains that several billion tons of plasma is hurled outward from the sun toward the rest of the solar system. This creates a solar storm and after 18 hours (and passing Mercury and Venus along the way), this plasma-fueled solar storm reaches the Earth’s atmosphere and begins to interact with it.

As a result of that entire process on the sun and the journey of the solar storm that follows, you get the bright, luminous, sparkling series of colors that drapes across the sky like celestial curtains during the winter months in arctic places such as Alaska.

Now, what if you were able to see this beautiful sight even closer up? As luck would have it, astronaut, Paulo Nespoli, while living on the International Space Station (ISS), was able to capture breathtaking footage of the Aurora Borealis from space one day.

It is written in his biography that Nespoli completed more than 60 experiments during this mission. He returned on 14 December 2017 after 139 days in space, making him the second-most experienced ESA astronaut, with 314 days in space over three flights. Thanks to cameras affixed to the exterior structure of the ISS, Nespoli was able to take 711 photos and share the beauty with the world in the form of a time-lapsed video.

Would you want to see this up close and personal one day? Let us know in the comments and be sure to tell your friends about this article, especially those who have an interest in space or nature.