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NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day

Aurora borealis over Norway January 24, 2012



January Aurora Over Norway Image Credit & Copyright: Bjørn Jørgensen

Explanation: What's that in the sky? An aurora. A large coronal mass ejection occurred on our Sun five days ago, throwing a cloud of fast moving electrons, protons, and ions toward the Earth.

Although most of this cloud passed above the Earth, some of it impacted our Earth's magnetosphere and resulted in spectacular auroras being seen at high northern latitudes. Pictured above is a particularly photogenic auroral corona captured last night above Grotfjord, Norway.

To some, this shimmering green glow of recombining atmospheric oxygen might appear as a large eagle, but feel free to share what it looks like to you. This round of solar activity is not yet over -- a new and even more powerful solar flare occurred yesterday that might provide more amazing aurora as soon as tonight.

NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day

[R. Scott]

Looks like it was directly overhead.

[RingerSIX]

I was chuckling to myself after seeing that one yesterday, thinking that it looks almost like an eagle. The beak isn’t quite there, but it’s close. And then the thought struck me... that given enough time of human history, one of these must have made a pretty reasonable facsimile of a face... and scared the devil out of someone.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so much for the beautiful photo!