'Absolutely unreal:' NASA astronaut snaps amazing photo of auroras from space station
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Loading... - Jake Martin
- 01 Mar 2023
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Josh Cassada has given us a bird's-eye view of the supercharged auroras.
You don't often see Earth's dazzling auroras from this angle.
NASA astronaut Josh Cassada just snapped a stunning shot of the light display from his perch on the International Space Station (ISS), which flies about 250 miles (400 kilometers) above Earth on average.
"Absolutely unreal," Cassada wrote by way of a caption for the photo, which he posted on Twitter(opens in new tab) on Tuesday (Feb. 28).
Cassada is far from the only skywatcher marveling at the auroras these days. The light shows — caused by the interaction of charged solar particles with molecules in Earth's atmosphere — have been supercharged recently by strong sun activity.
Specifically, a "hole" in the sun's outer atmosphere, or corona, souped up the flow of the solar wind, the stream of charged particles flowing constantly from our star. And huge clouds of solar plasma that were rocketed into space by coronal mass ejections slammed into our planet on both Sunday (Feb. 26) and Monday (Feb. 27), adding more fuel to the auroral fire. Read More…
