Recent Sun Activity Spawns Stunning Aurorae

By Nancy Atkinson - November 1, 2013 at 5:42 PM UTC | Solar Astronomy
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Over the past several days the Sun has unleashed more than half a dozen major flares including four X-class events. The resulting aurora in some parts of the world have been beautiful. Here's a collection of recent images taken by Jason Arhns in Alaska and one by Frank Olsen in Norway. In the image above, it seems the aurora is blanketing not only the sky, but the landscape as well!

See more below, as well as a video showing 23 of the 26 M- and X-class flares on the Sun between Oct. 23 and Oct. 28, 2013, as captured by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory. It also shows the coronal mass ejections -- great clouds of solar material bursting off the Sun into space -- during that time as captured by the ESA/NASA Solar and Heliospheric Observatory.

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Aurora seen over northern Norway on October 22, 2013. Credit and copyright: Frank Olsen. [/caption]

You can see more of Frank's beautiful imagery of aurora, the night sky and more at

his Flickr page

,

his website

(he has prints for sale) or

his Facebook page.

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Aurora over Sukakpak, Yukon-Koyukuk Census Area County, Alaska, US, November 1, 2013. Credit and copyright: Jason Ahrns. [/caption]

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A stunning green aurora almost covers the sky, but peeking through are the Pleiades and the Andromeda Galaxy. Credit and copyright: Jason Ahrns. [/caption]

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson is a space journalist and author with a passion for telling the stories of people involved in space exploration and astronomy. She is currently retired from daily writing, but worked at Universe Today for 20 years as a writer and editor. She also contributed articles to The Planetary Society, Ad Astra (National Space Society), New Scientist and many other online outlets.

Her 2019 book, "Eight Years to the Moon: The History of the Apollo Missions,” shares the untold stories of engineers and scientists who worked behind the scenes to make the Apollo program so successful, despite the daunting odds against it. Her first book “Incredible Stories From Space: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Missions Changing Our View of the Cosmos” (2016) tells the stories of 37 scientists and engineers that work on several current NASA robotic missions to explore the solar system and beyond.

Nancy is also a NASA/JPL Solar System Ambassador, and through this program, she has the opportunity to share her passion of space and astronomy with children and adults through presentations and programs. Nancy's personal website is nancyatkinson.com