Northern Lights Seen on Mars

in the world northern Lights and southern lights aka auroras it’s pretty awesome. However, our planet is not the only place in the Solar System where these events can occur.

On every planet except some moons of Mercury and Jupiter and even a comet, sometimes in invisible wavelengths atmospheric a glare detected. But that’s where it gets interesting Anthem. The red planet is famous for its missing global magnetic field, which is a component and plays a crucial role in the formation of aurora elsewhere. However, this does not mean that Mars is completely free of magnetism. In some parts of the earth’s crust, especially in the southern hemisphere, regions of localized magnetic fields sprout. A new study finds that these small, local magnetic fields are used to produce the discrete ultraviolet northern lights of Mars. with the solar wind revealed that they interacted in interesting ways.

How solar wind affects auroras on Mars revealed

University of Iowa physicist and astronomer Zachary Girazian said:We conducted the first detailed study looking at how solar wind conditions affect auroras on Mars.” said.

Girazian, “Our main finding is that within the strong crustal field region, the rate of aurora formation mostly depends on the direction of the solar wind magnetic field. Outside the strong crustal field region, the rate of formation is mostly dependent on the dynamic pressure of the solar wind.He explained the reason for the northern lights appearing on Mars.

Auroras are formed in the same way on Earth and in space.

The two biggest examples of auroras on Earth are northern lights and southern lights. There’s pretty clear scientific evidence for how these two auroras were formed. These lights are produced when particles from the solar wind collide with the Earth’s magnetosphere. They then rain down into the upper atmosphere, accelerating along magnetic field lines to higher latitudes. They interact with atmospheric particles to produce lights that dance, twinkle in the sky.

Evidence emerging from the research shows that the phenomena occur in similar ways in other objects. For example, Jupiter‘s powerful, persistent northern lights are revealed by the massive planet’s complex magnetic field.

But Mars’ global magnetic field was disrupted quite early in the planet’s history, leaving behind only the magnetized minerals in the crust. magnetism left the pieces. Ultraviolet images of Mars at night revealed that northern lights tend to form near these crustal magnetic fields.

The solar wind is not the only cause of northern lights on Mars!

Girazian and his team’s work takes into account the conditions of the solar wind. At the same time, the team has been collecting ultraviolet images of the red planet since 2014.MAVEN) also analyzed data from the spacecraft.

The pressure of the solar wind appears to play little role in the brightness of these northern lights, according to the team’s work. This led Girazian and his team to think that space weather events such as coronal mass ejections, in which masses of charged particles are ejected from the Sun and associated with higher solar wind pressure, could trigger the northern lights on Mars.

Within the crustal magnetic field regions, the direction of the magnetic field and the solar wind seem to play an important role in the formation of the northern lights on Mars. In certain directions, the solar wind appears suitable for magnetic reconnection events or particle acceleration required to produce ultraviolet radiation.

These results reveal new insights into how the northern lights might appear on a planet stripped of the global magnetic field of interactions with the solar wind, the researchers said.