NASA’s Rover Perseverance captured a Aurora in Visible Light in Mars with the sky shining gently in green. This was the first record of an aurora made from the surface of another planet beyond the earth .
Scientists said the dawn occurred on March 18, 2024, when Sun’s super -energy particles found the atmosphere of Mars, triggering a reaction that generated a fine shine throughout the night sky. Auroras were previously observed in Mars by satellites from the orbit, in ultraviolet wavelengths, but not in visible light.
Three days earlier, the sun had launched a solar rash accompanied by an ejection of coronal mass – a huge explosion of gas and magnetic energy that carries large amounts of solar energy particles – which spread through the solar system. Mars is the fourth planet from the sun after Mercury, Venus and Earth.
The scientists simulated the event in advance and prepared Rover’s instruments to be ready to observe the expected dawn. Perseverance has two wavelength sensitive instruments in the visible track, which detect colors that human eyes can see. The researchers used Rover’s supercam spectrometer to precisely identify green shine wavelength and then use their mastcam-z camera to record a gently lit-lit sky image.
A dawn is formed in Mars just as on Earth, with particles loaded with energy colliding with atoms and molecules in the atmosphere, shaking them and causing subatomic particles called electrons to emit light particles called photons.
“But on Earth, the charged particles are channeled to the polar regions by the global magnetic field of our planet,” said Elise Wright Knutsen, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Oslo Sensor and Space Systems Center and the lead author of the study published this week in Science Advances magazine.
“Mars does not have a global magnetic field, so that the loaded particles bombed the entire planet at the same time, which led to this planetary dawn,” Knutsen added.
The green color occurred due to the interaction between the charged particles of the sun and oxygen in the planet’s atmosphere. Although auroras can be bright – as often seen in the northern and southern regions of the Earth – the one observed on Mars was quite thin.
“This specific dawn we observed on March 18 last year would have been very weak to be seen directly by humans. But if we have a more intense solar storm, it can become bright enough to be seen by future astronauts. And with a camera, like an iPhone, you would see it clearly, just as an dawn on earth is always brighter in images than the bare eye,” Knutsen said.
This specific event did not impact the earth.
All planets with atmospheres in our solar system have auroras.
“Several types and wavelengths of Auroras have been previously observed by Mars orbit satellites. All previous observations were ultraviolet, but had quite different forms,” ​​said Knutsen.
If Earth astronauts visit Mars and perhaps set a long -term presence on the planet’s surface, they will be able to watch a night light show.
“During a more intense solar storm that produces a brighter dawn, I think a sky that shines green from horizon to horizon will be frighteningly beautiful,” said Knutsen.
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This content was originally published in NASA probe captured for the first time Aurora in Visible Light on Mars on CNN Brazil.
Source: CNN Brasil
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