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  • Published
    37 Images

    Amazing auroras: Mother Nature's stunning light show

    95 million miles from the Earth, the sun erupts in spectacular solar flares -- and here on Earth, we are dazzled by auroras that dance and twist across the face of the planet. 

  • aurora_freighter2
    April 24, 2012: Tiny specks of light twinkle from a lonely freighter (dead center). For more of Shawn Malone's stunning photography, go to LakeSuperiorPhoto.com.
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    Shawn Malone/LakeSuperiorPhoto.com
  • aurora_milky_way
    April 22, 2012: An aurora and the Milky Way. For more stunning photography by Shawn Malone, go to LakeSuperiorPhoto.com.
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    Shawn Malone/LakeSuperiorPhoto.com
  • meteor_aurora
    April 22, 2012: A meteor streaks across the sky. See more at LakeSuperiorPhoto.com.
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    Shawn Malone/LakeSuperiorPhoto.com
  • aurora_on_horizon
    April 24, 2012: Northern lights on the horizon.
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    Shawn Malone/LakeSuperiorPhoto.com
  • northern_lights_star_trails
    April 22, 2012: Light trails and light pollution.
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    Shawn Malone/LakeSuperiorPhoto.com
  • brightest_aurora_venus
    April 13, 2012: Venus sets next to a stunningly bright aurora over the water.
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    Shawn Malone/LakeSuperiorPhoto.com
  • trees_aurora
    March 16, 2012: Subtle but beautiful, the eerie green glow of the aurora permeates the night sky.
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    Shawn Malone/LakeSuperiorPhoto.com
  • beautiful_colors_aurora
    March 19, 2012: After four straight days of auroras, suddenly, a beautiful spectrum of color.
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    Shawn Malone/LakeSuperiorPhoto.com
  • Aurora Storm
    The solar storm hitting our atmosphere resulted in a vivid display of gorgeous colors. For Michel Tournay, the whole sky was green and purple. "I had trouble deciding where to aim my camera."
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    Michel Tournay
  • Aurora Storm
    Another shot of the aurora -- more commonly called the Northern Lights -- taken near the LG-1 dam, 20 miles from Chisasibi, Quebec, in Canada with a Nikon D3 camera.
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    Michel Tournay
  • Battling the Clouds
    In Ringsaker, Norway, the aurora borealis was fighting with clouds, moonlight, and sunlight for visibility at 2am local time Wednesday morning.
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    Ragnar Johnskås
  • Stockholm Scene
    Photographer Peter Rosen captured this eye-popping view of the northern lights over Stockholm, Sweden.
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    Peter Rosen
  • A Starry Night
    These Northern Lights were very faint to the human eye, but vivid to the camera. Photographer Mike Hillingshead describes how he captured it in Little Sioux, Iowa: “If one didn’t know what they were looking for they’d never have known they were there. With a camera it makes it easy to be sure. For a couple hours, I was readily picking up the red/purple higher up while the near horizon area was full of clouds. Got a cap and could see green through it and was then I was sure.”
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    Mike Hillingshead
  • Canadian Arctic
    This shot of the aurora was taken by Doug McLarty in the Canadian Arctic -- near the Rankin Inlet area in Nunavut, Canada.
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    Doug McLarty
  • Beauty in Babbitt
    “My wife and I headed out last night to see if the recent solar flares would produce some northern lights in our area. We were fortunate to catch a few nice displays before it dimmed.” – Photographer Tom Pinkerton.
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    Tom Pinkerton
  • Hiding Behind Clouds
    Photographer Eric Coulombe caught this pretty scene in Val-d’or, Quebec, Canada. “There were some nice auroras that were hidden behind a cloud, but it was a great show.”
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    Eric Coulombe
  • Star Trails and Northern Lights
    “The Northern Lights were out last night from about 11 to midnight. At times they were bright and well defined. This picture was shot at Elbow Lake near Grand Marais, Minnesota. Even with the streaks, you can still make out the shape of the big dipper pointing right to the North Star.” – Photographer Bryan Hansel
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    Bryan Hansel
  • Purple Green
    This shot of an amazing aurora with lots of green and purple was taken by Colin Chatfield just east of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan in Canada.
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    Colin Chatfield
  • A Passing Meteor
    “They were bright, but I've seen brighter. The aurora was dancing around with swirling structure and a red glow at the base. The faint streak on one photo is a meteor that I saw while taking the picture.” – Photographer Gunjan Sinha in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada.
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    Gunjan Sinha
  • Northern Lights
    The solar event caused a beautiful light show for Shawn Malone of Marquette, Mich. He captured this picture over Lake Superior; there's a green hue because of oxygen emissions in the atmosphere. Nitrogen emissions would produce a blue or red glow depending on the state of the atoms.
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    Shawn Malone / Lake Superior Photo
  • Watching
    There was nothing more than a hint of green above the horizon in Ontario, Canada, where Robert Snache watched the event. 
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    Robert Snache / Flickr
  • Northern Glow and Startrails
    The storm has subsided quite a bit from reports, but still gave Robert quite a view.
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    Robert Snache / Flickr
  • Aurora Over Oslo
    "We drove up into the woods in hope that we would be able to photograph the aurora that was supposed to appear all over southern Norway," writes a photographer from Oslo. "When we reached our destination the skies where partially clouded but is seemed to be getting clearer." Looks like it cleared up well enough to capture this stunning shot. 
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    Trym Norman Sannes / SpaceWeather
  • Aurora Over Oslo
    "Miraculously, the fog disappeared as fast is it had arrived," explained Norwegian photographer Trym Norman Sannes. "Just a short time later as I was photographing the rising moon I saw a green ray of northern light on my cameras LCD. After this it just got more intense."
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    Trym Norman Sannes / SpaceWeather
  • Minnesota
    Much of the U.S. was cloudy, but some photographers lucked out -- like Travis Novitsky. "Well, the aurora made a pretty good showing last night! It sounds like most everyone in Minnesota had cloudy skies, but lucky for me the clouds didn't move in to my area until after the aurora faded."
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    Travis Novitsky / SpaceWeather
  • Beautiful Aurora
    Travis Novitsky / SpaceWeather
  • Minnesota's Stars
    "These images were all captured between 11:00 p.m. and 12:00 a.m," explains Minnesotan photographer Travis Novitsky. "At about 11:45 I noticed the moon was coming up, so I made a couple of exposures of the moon as well as the northern lights." The results are stunning. 
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    Travis Novitsky / SpaceWeather
  • Stars Over Minnesota
    It appears tke sky remained clear long enough for Novitsky to capture some truly great photographs. 
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    Travis Novitsky / SpaceWeather
  • Wisconsin
    "It was a sweet surprise to catch a glimpse again of a spectacular event known as the Aurora Borealis over Lake Wissota in Chippewa Falls, WI, where I live," said photographer Tony Wilder. 
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    Tony Wilder / SpaceWeather
  • Gorgeous Aurora
    "I grabbed these shots with my CANON 30D on a tripod manually focused to infinity at f2.8 ISO 400 for 20 seconds," said Wilder. "The northern lights never get old, but I got tired and headed back in to crash at about 3 a.m. CST."
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    Tony Wilder / SpaceWeather
  • Over Chippewa Falls, WI
    While many portions of the United States were clouded over last night, Wisconsin seems to have experienced beautiful weather. 
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    Tony Wilder / SpaceWeather
  • Skies Over Saskatoon
    Bob Johnson photographed beautiful dancing auroras over Canada -- and a meteor as well.
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    Bob Johnson / SpaceWeather
  • Green Smudge
    By the time it was dark enough to see, the aurora was merely a green smudge low on the horizon, Robert reports.
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    Robert Snache / Flickr
  • Spectacular Aurora
    In northern latitudes, the effect is known as the aurora borealis, named after the Roman goddess of dawn, Aurora, and the Greek name for the north wind, Boreas. The solar event caused skies to light up from the U.S. to Denmark, where this spectacular view of an aurora was taken.
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    Jesper Grønne
  • Auroral Mechanism
    Auroras are the result of emissions of photons in the Earth's upper atmosphere, about 50 miles above the ground. Oxygen and nitrogen atoms are ionized or excited by the collision of solar wind particles, such as those caused by the solar emission.
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    Jesper Grønne
  • Solar Eruption
    This extreme ultraviolet snapshot from the NASA Solar Dynamics Observatory shows the sun's northern hemisphere in mid-eruption amidst a tumult of activity: a C3-class solar flare, a solar tsunami, multiple filaments of magnetism, shaking of the corona, radio bursts and a coronal mass ejection.
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    NASA
  • Sun_Waking_Up
    NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory snapped this X-ray photo of the Sun early in the morning of Sunday, August 1. The dark arc near the top right edge of the image is a filament of plasma blasting off the surface --  the "coronal mass ejection" that led to the auroras. The bright region is an unassociated solar flare.
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    NASA
  • Published
    37 Images

    Amazing auroras: Mother Nature's stunning light show

    95 million miles from the Earth, the sun erupts in spectacular solar flares -- and here on Earth, we are dazzled by auroras that dance and twist across the face of the planet. 

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  • Amazing auroras: Mother Nature's stunning light show
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  • aurora_on_horizon
  • northern_lights_star_trails
  • brightest_aurora_venus
  • trees_aurora
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  • Aurora Storm
  • Aurora Storm
  • Battling the Clouds
  • Stockholm Scene
  • A Starry Night
  • Canadian Arctic
  • Beauty in Babbitt
  • Hiding Behind Clouds
  • Star Trails and Northern Lights
  • Purple Green
  • A Passing Meteor
  • Northern Lights
  • Watching
  • Northern Glow and Startrails
  • Aurora Over Oslo
  • Aurora Over Oslo
  • Minnesota
  • Beautiful Aurora
  • Minnesota's Stars
  • Stars Over Minnesota
  • Wisconsin
  • Gorgeous Aurora
  • Over Chippewa Falls, WI
  • Skies Over Saskatoon
  • Green Smudge
  • Spectacular Aurora
  • Auroral Mechanism
  • Solar Eruption
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