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APOD

Astronomy Picture of the Day

Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.

See Explanation. Clicking on the picture will download the highest resolution version available.

Dragon Aurora over Norway

Explanation: What's that in the sky? An aurora. A large coronal hole opened last month, a few days before this image was taken, throwing a cloud of fast moving electrons , protons , and ions toward the Earth . Some of this cloud impacted our Earth's magnetosphere and resulted in spectacular auroras being seen at high northern latitudes. Featured here is a particularly photogenic auroral curtain captured above Troms Norway . To the astrophotographer, this shimmering green glow of recombining atmospheric oxygen appeared as a large dragon , but feel free to share what it looks like to you. Although now past Solar Maximum , our Sun continues to show occasional activity creating impressive auroras on Earth visible even last week .

Date April 10, 2018
Credit Image Credit & Copyright: Marco Bastoni
Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)
A service of: ASD at NASA / GSFC,
NASA Science Activation & Michigan Tech. U.