冰岛板块分界线上空的螺旋极光
2023年7月30日 Spiral Aurora over Icelandic Divide Image Credit & Copyright: Juan Carlos Casado (Starry Earth, TWAN) Explanation: Admire the beauty but fear the beast. The beauty is the aurora overhead, here taking the form of a great green spiral, seen between picturesque clouds with the bright Moon to the side and stars in the background. The beast is the wave of charged particles that creates the aurora but might, one day, impair civilization. In 1859, following notable auroras seen all across the globe, a pulse of charged particles from a coronal mass ejection (CME) associated with a solar flare impacted Earth’s magnetosphere so forcefully that it created the Carrington Event. This assault from the Sun compressed the Earth’s magnetic field so violently that it created…