Aurora Borealis
It's been a very busy time since my last post, both in my personal life and in the space industry - the Japanese have been having some particularly exciting successes I've been meaning to write about, and the launch of SpaceX's Falcon has quite amazing implications, but I haven't gotten around to any writing about any of this.
Even so, I didn't want to let this picture pass by without doing my little bit to share it around. The Aurora Borealis, or "Northern Lights", is an entirely natural phenomenon and yet photographs of it could hardly seem more alien if they tried. Of course, there must be a million photos out there by now, it's not exactly a new thing - but this is the first photo I've seen of the phenomena taken from the opposite perspective: looking down from space.
Image: NASAI've always felt that knowing the physics behind a rainbow has somehow reduced my appreciation for them, yet strangely knowing the physics behind the Aurora Borealis seems to make it even more impressive in my mind. For me, the AB (I'm getting lazy) highlights our human fragility, and the way our lives depend on the protection of the planet in a way we rarely, if ever, appreciate.
There is also something a little bit Sci-Fi about it. The AB is as close as we are likely to experience within our lifetimes, to being on a spacecraft with "deflector shields" being attacked by another vessel. When geomagnetic storms cause the Sun to unleash its fury in our direction, it's the AB that tells us the Earth's shield is holding up against the onslaught and we can go on about our lives, flying along on spaceship Earth happily oblivious to the raw energy being hurled in our direction.
Not so the astronauts on board the ISS, who took this photo, or our satellites which can be damaged by severe storms. Happily the Sun is in a strangely quiet mood, and we're not entirely sure why. But that's a post for another day.
Even so, I didn't want to let this picture pass by without doing my little bit to share it around. The Aurora Borealis, or "Northern Lights", is an entirely natural phenomenon and yet photographs of it could hardly seem more alien if they tried. Of course, there must be a million photos out there by now, it's not exactly a new thing - but this is the first photo I've seen of the phenomena taken from the opposite perspective: looking down from space.
Image: NASAI've always felt that knowing the physics behind a rainbow has somehow reduced my appreciation for them, yet strangely knowing the physics behind the Aurora Borealis seems to make it even more impressive in my mind. For me, the AB (I'm getting lazy) highlights our human fragility, and the way our lives depend on the protection of the planet in a way we rarely, if ever, appreciate.
There is also something a little bit Sci-Fi about it. The AB is as close as we are likely to experience within our lifetimes, to being on a spacecraft with "deflector shields" being attacked by another vessel. When geomagnetic storms cause the Sun to unleash its fury in our direction, it's the AB that tells us the Earth's shield is holding up against the onslaught and we can go on about our lives, flying along on spaceship Earth happily oblivious to the raw energy being hurled in our direction.
Not so the astronauts on board the ISS, who took this photo, or our satellites which can be damaged by severe storms. Happily the Sun is in a strangely quiet mood, and we're not entirely sure why. But that's a post for another day.