January 14, 2024
On your birthday, the Earth completed another orbit — 584 million miles traveled since your last celebration.
Dragon Aurora over Iceland
Birthday · January 14, 2024
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APOD published January 14, 2024. Credit: Jingyi Zhang & Wang Zheng. A publication-date match, not a photo taken on your date. Independent of NASA.
Have you ever seen a dragon in the sky? Although real flying dragons don't exist, a huge dragon-shaped aurora developed in the sky over Iceland in 2019. The aurora was caused by a hole in the Sun's corona that expelled charged particles into a solar wind that followed a changing interplanetary magnetic field to Earth's magnetosphere. As some of those particles then struck Earth's atmosphere, they excited atoms which subsequently emitted light: aurora. This iconic display was so enthralling that the photographer's mother ran out to see it and was captured in the foreground. Our active Sun continues to show an unusually high number of prominences, filaments, sunspots, and large active regions as solar maximum approaches in 2025.
Image credit: Jingyi Zhang & Wang Zheng