Watch a Video of Purple Rain Covering the Red Planet: Shared by NASA
In an extraordinary revelation, NASA has shared a mesmerizing video that showcases auroras lighting up the Martian night sky.
Captured in infrared, these visuals depict the Red Planet bathed in an enchanting purple hue.
The images were taken by the Imaging Ultraviolet Spectrograph instrument aboard NASA’s MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution) orbiter, providing a rare glimpse into the atmospheric phenomena on Mars.
The MAVEN spacecraft, which has been orbiting Mars since its launch in 2014, captured these incredible images between May 14 and May 20 this year.
As the spacecraft continued its journey around Mars, it focused on the planet’s nightside, recording the magical aurora lights that seemed to cover the entire surface with a purple hue.
This year marks the 10th anniversary of MAVEN’s mission, a milestone that the US space agency will celebrate in September.
Interestingly, the purple lights observed in the video are not actually purple in reality. The color was used by NASA to trace the presence of auroras over Mars’s sky.
The brighter the purple hue, the more auroras were present in the sky.
These auroras were tracked as waves of energetic particles from a solar storm.
NASA explained in an Instagram post that the purple pattern abruptly stopped when the most energetic particles arrived, overwhelming the instrument with noise.
Auroras on Mars are quite different from those on Earth.
On our planet, auroras are visible when energetic particles from solar storms travel down magnetic field lines, creating colorful lights near the poles.
Earth’s robust magnetic field restricts these lights to polar regions. Mars, however, lost its internally generated magnetic field in the ancient past.
Without this protective shield, charged particles from solar storms hit the Martian atmosphere directly, resulting in auroras that engulf the entire planet.
This lack of a magnetic field means that when charged particles enter Mars’s atmosphere, there’s no protection from the barrage of energetic particles, creating a planet-wide auroral display.
This stunning video not only highlights the beauty of the Martian auroras but also underscores the unique atmospheric conditions on Mars.
As MAVEN continues its mission, we can look forward to more incredible discoveries and visuals from the Red Planet.
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