Auroras

Science Mission Directorate
Auroras
Heliophysics
Planetary Science Division
The Solar System
The Sun
How can I see the northern lights? To see the northern lights, you need to be in the right place at the right time. Auroras are the result of charged particles and magnetism from the Sun called space weather dancing with the Earth’s magnetic field. And they happen far above the clouds. So you need […]
Posted March 26, 2025
Auroras
CubeSats
EZIE (Electrojet Zeeman Imaging Explorer)
Goddard Space Flight Center
Heliophysics
Heliophysics Division
Missions
Small Satellite Missions
The Sun
Under the nighttime California sky, NASA’s EZIE (Electrojet Zeeman Imaging Explorer) mission launched aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket at 11:43 p.m. PDT on March 14.
Posted March 15, 2025
Auroras
EZIE (Electrojet Zeeman Imaging Explorer)
Goddard Space Flight Center
Heliophysics
Missions
Small Satellite Missions
The Sun
High above Earth’s poles, intense electrical currents called electrojets flow through the upper atmosphere when auroras glow in the sky. These auroral electrojets push about a million amps of electrical charge around the poles every second.
Posted February 25, 2025
2023 Solar Eclipse
2024 Solar Eclipse
Auroras
Opportunities For Students to Get Involved
Science Activation
In 2023 and 2024, two eclipses crossed the United States, and the NASA Science Activation program’s Eclipse Ambassadors Off the Path project invited undergraduate students and amateur astronomers to join them as “NASA Partner Eclipse Ambassadors”.
Posted February 18, 2025
Auroras
Peering through the window of the SpaceX Dragon Endeavour spacecraft, NASA astronaut Matthew Dominick captured this image on Oct. 7, 2024 of the SpaceX Dragon Freedom spacecraft as vivid green and pink aurora swirled through Earth’s atmosphere while the International Space Station soared 273 miles above the Indian Ocean.
Posted December 31, 2024
Auroras
Citizen Science
Goddard Space Flight Center
Heliophysics
Heliophysics Division
ICESat-2 (Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite-2)
Ionosphere
Mesosphere
Science & Research
Science Mission Directorate
May 2024 has already proven to be a particularly stormy month for our Sun. During the first full week of May, a barrage of large solar flares and coronal mass ejections (CMEs) launched clouds of charged particles and magnetic fields toward Earth, creating the strongest solar storm to reach Earth in two decades — and […]
Posted May 16, 2024
Auroras
Solar Flares
The aurora paints the sky near Malad City, Idaho, red, purple, and green in this May 11, 2024, image. This aurora was sparked by multiple eruptions of solar material—called coronal mass ejections—colliding with Earth’s magnetic field.
Posted May 14, 2024
Auroras
Goddard Space Flight Center
Heliophysics
Sunspots
The Sun
Uncategorized
A NASA-funded team of scientists has discovered long-lasting radio signals emanating from the Sun that are similar to those associated with auroras – northern and southern lights – on Earth. Detected about 25,000 miles (40,000 km) above a sunspot – a relatively cool, dark, and magnetically active region on the Sun – such radio bursts […]
Posted March 13, 2024
Auroras
Citizen Science
Suomi NPP (Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership)
The Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite sensor on the NOAA-NASA Suomi NPP satellite captured this image of the aurora borealis, or northern lights, over western Canada at 3:23 a.m. MST (5:23 a.m. EST) on November 5, 2023.
Posted January 17, 2024
James Webb Space Telescope (JWST)
Auroras
Brown Dwarfs
Goddard Space Flight Center
Heliophysics
Science & Research
Stars
The Universe
Infrared emission from methane suggests atmospheric heating by auroral processes. Astronomers using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope have found a brown dwarf (an object more massive than Jupiter but smaller than a star) with infrared emission from methane, likely due to energy in its upper atmosphere.
Posted January 9, 2024
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