Night on a Spooky Planet

Night on a Spooky Planet
What spooky planet is this? Planet Earth of course, on a dark and stormy night in 2013 at Hverir, a geothermally active area along the volcanic landscape in northeastern Iceland. Geomagnetic storms produced the auroral display in the starry night sky while ghostly towers of steam and gas venting from fumaroles danced against the eerie greenish light.

A geomagnetic storm is a major disturbance of Earth's magnetosphere that occurs when there is a very efficient exchange of energy from the solar wind into the space environment surrounding Earth. These storms result from variations in the solar wind that produces major changes in the currents, plasmas, and fields in Earth’s magnetosphere. The solar wind conditions that are effective for creating geomagnetic storms are sustained (for several to many hours) periods of high-speed solar wind, and most importantly, a southward directed solar wind magnetic field (opposite the direction of Earth’s field) at the dayside of the magnetosphere. This condition is effective for transferring energy from the solar wind into Earth’s magnetosphere.

Know more about geomagnetic storms:
http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/phenomena/geomagnetic-storms

Fumaroles are vents from which volcanic gas escapes into the atmosphere. Fumaroles may occur along tiny cracks or long fissures, in chaotic clusters or fields, and on the surfaces of lava flows and thick deposits of pyroclastic flows.

Know more about fumaroles:
https://www.volcanodiscovery.com/what-is-a-fumarole.html

Image & info via APOD
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html

Image Credit & Copyright: Stéphane Vetter (Nuits sacrées)

#NASA #fumaroles #geomagnetictorms #naturalphenomena #space #science