Ukrainian polar researchers captured an incredible night sky near the "Akademik Vernadskyi" station — the photographs show not only a reddish aurora, but also two neighboring galaxies, UNN reports, citing the National Antarctic Scientific Center.
Why is the aurora reddish?
The scientific center notes that we usually imagine the aurora as green. In fact, it can take on different colors depending on which atoms and molecules of gases in Earth's atmosphere emit light and at what altitude this occurs.
When high-energy charged particles from the solar wind enter the upper layers of the atmosphere, they ionize atoms and molecules of various gases, causing them to emit light of different colors. Red and green shades are mainly associated with oxygen emissions. At altitudes above 200 km, atomic oxygen often creates a red glow, while lower down it produces a green one.
And what are those two hazy spots among the stars?
In the second photo, if you look closely, you can notice two blurred patches of light. These are the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds — dwarf galaxies that are satellites of our Milky Way.
The Large Magellanic Cloud is located approximately 160,000 light-years from Earth, while the Small Magellanic Cloud is 200,000 light-years away. Both can be observed with the naked eye in the Southern Hemisphere under favorable conditions.
As noted by the NASC, these images combine phenomena of completely different scales. The aurora occurs hundreds of kilometers above Earth, while the light from the Magellanic Clouds traveled through space for hundreds of thousands of years before reaching the camera lens!