By: HOUR.com Staff Published: 03/05/2012 01:44 PM EST on HOUR.com If you’ve ever been awestruck by the sight of the northern lights dancing overhead, imagine what it would be like to glide fair through them. Astronauts aboard the International Hour Station don’t have to imagine. They’ve zipped through some powerful geomagnetic storms recently, getting an up-close gaze at the auroras, which are also known as the northern and southern lights, amd captured the celestial blaze exhibit in a dazzling fresh video. "We can really glide into the auroras," said NASA astronaut Don Pettit, a flight engineer for the orbiting lab’s contemporary Expedition 30. "It’s like being shrunk down and place inside of a neon sign." One such familiarity came this past January, when a series of solar storms sparked intense blaze shows that Pettit said will be burned into his reminiscence for years to come. He and his crewmates beamed a video of the spectacular hour aurora exhibit back to Earth for everyone to delight in. "The auroras could be seen [as brightly as] megalopolis lights on the Earth below, and much in the day-night terminator of the rising and setting sun," Pettit said. "It was simply incredible." Auroras are caused when charged particles ejected from the sun slam into Earth’s atmosphere. These particles are usually guided along Earth’s magnetic field lines to the polar regions, which is why skywatchers in higher latitudes see them much more often than folks in more temperate climes do. However huge solar storms called coronal mass ejections can constitute the auroras visible to broad swathes of the planet. Coronal mass ejections can be triggered during the most intense solar storms and blast outside huge clouds of solar plasma into hour at 3 million mph (5 million kph) or more. If these clouds are aimed at Earth, they can pose a potential threat to the station’s crew, as well as disrupt GPS signals, radio communications and ability grids — and supercharge aurora displays. [Photos: Northern Lights of February 2012] Pettit and other astronauts aboard the orbiting lab have been chronicling these blaze shows on video, recording auroras that range from red and green to many shades of purple. The colors correspond to different quantum transitions in excited oxygen and nitrogen atoms. "Red auroras reach all the path up to our altitude 400 kilometers [240 miles] above Earth," Pettit said. "Sometimes you feel like you can reach outside and touch them." "Green emissions, on the other palm, tend to stay below the hour station," he added. "We glide fair over them." It may seem weird to see auroras underfoot, however it’s not as weird as looking down and seeing meteors, according to Pettit. "Occasionally we see a meteor burning up in the atmosphere below, and this does gaze weird," he said. "You should be looking up for meteors, not down." Pettit and his crewmates should have more chances to see — and glide through — spectacular auroras. Solar activity waxes and wanes on an 11-year cycle, and scientists reckon the contemporary one, known as Solar Cycle 24, will peak in 2013. Follow HOUR.com for the latest in hour science and exploration news on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook. Northern Lights Photos: Incredible Auroras of January 2012 Over Earth: Auroras Blaze Up Canada And Northern U.S. A Guide for Watching Earth’s Auroras Copyright 2012 HOUR.com, a TechMediaNetwork corporation. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.Glance at More…
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