This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: With their mysterious glow and swirling veils of color, auroras enchant even experienced researchers. When a particularly intense solar storm reached Earth on the night of May 10, 2024, and relevant websites predicted auroras even for southern Lower Saxony, several researchers from the Technical University of Braunschweig, the Fraunhofer Institute for Surface Engineering and Thin Films IST, the University of Göttingen, and the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS) took to the outdoors.
"I've seen many auroras at higher latitudes. Above Göttingen, they're a rarity. I absolutely wanted to photograph them.
I wasn't originally interested in using the photos for scientific purposes," MPS director and passionate photographer Sami K. Solanki recalls his nighttime excursion. Philipp Schulz from the Fraunhofer Institute for Surface Engineering and Thin Films IST, Ingo von Borstel from the Institute for Geophysics and Extraterrestrial Physics at the Technical University of Braunschweig, and Klaus Reinsch from the Institute for Astrophysics and Geophysics at the University of Göttingen shared the same experience as the Göttingen-based solar researcher.
Yet their images proved to be as picturesque as they were unusual: Above the green auroras near the surface, a reddish glow can be seen; bright rays extend downward from red to green. "Rays continuously connecting the red aurora above to the green aurora below have not been reported in any scientific paper," says Bruce T. Tsurutani, a former scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and first author of the new study published in Annales Geophysicae.
"They have helped us understand the origin of the red glow," he adds. Yasuhito Narita of the Technical University of Braunschweig coordinated the international team of researchers, who compared the images with data on the solar wind and disturbances in the Earth's magnetic field. The May 10, 2024, storm was the second most intense magnetic storm of the space age (since 1958).
Red auroras occur during intense magnetic storms at middle latitudes, typically at altitudes ranging from 800 to 200 kilometers (497 to 124 miles). The mechanism behind red auroral formation has been the subject of extensive theoretical research. Many different ideas have been proposed.
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