保护地球，探索宇宙，发现文明
2022年10月18日 Milky Way Auroral Flower Image Credit & Copyright: Göran Strand Explanation: Could the stem of our Milky Way bloom into an auroral flower? No, not really, even though it may appear that way in today’s featured all-sky image. On the left, the central plane of our home galaxy extends from the horizon past the middle of the sky. On the right, a...
2022年3月22日 A Whale of an Aurora over Swedish Forest Image Credit & Copyright: Göran Strand Explanation: What’s that in the sky? An aurora. A large coronal mass ejection occurred on our Sun earlier this month, throwing a cloud of fast-moving electrons, protons, and ions toward the Earth. Part of this cloud impacted our Earth’s magnetosphere a...
2021年12月28日 Sun Halo over Sweden Video Credit & Copyright: Håkan Hammar (Vemdalen Ski Resort, SkiStar) Explanation: What’s happened to the Sun? Sometimes it looks like the Sun is being viewed through a giant lens. In the featured video, however, there are actually millions of tiny lenses: ice crystals. Water may freeze in the atmosphere into small...
2021年03月14日 A Flag Shaped Aurora over Sweden Image Credit & Copyright: Mia Stålnacke Explanation: It appeared, momentarily, like a 50-km tall banded flag. In mid-March of 2015, an energetic Coronal Mass Ejection directed toward a clear magnetic channel to Earth led to one of the more intense geomagnetic storms of recent years. A visual result was wide s...
2021年02月01日 Lunar Halo over Snowy Trees Image Credit & Copyright: Göran Strand Explanation: Have you ever seen a halo around the Moon? This fairly common sight occurs when high thin clouds containing millions of tiny ice crystals cover much of the sky. Each ice crystal acts like a miniature lens. Because most of the crystals have a similar elongated hex...