Solar Storms Trigger Northern Lights
Referring to: National Geographic
Photograph by Ole C. Salomonsen, arcticlightphoto.no
Northern lights dance over the Lyngan Alps in a picture taken Tuesday night near Tromsø, Norway. The brilliant auroras were triggered by a coronal mass ejection, or CME, that hit our planet Tuesday morning.
A CME is a cloud of superheated gas and charged particles hurled off the sun.
When a CME hits Earth, the charged solar particles can interact with gases in our atmosphere to produce the northern and southern lights.
Watch a time-lapse video of this week's auroras over Lapland.
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