September 30, 2011
The constellations may be old, but the person celebrating beneath them is gloriously new by cosmic standards.
Cloudy Night of the Northern Lights
Birthday · September 30, 2011
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APOD published September 30, 2011. Credit: Fredrick Broms. A publication-date match, not a photo taken on your date. Independent of NASA.
On September 26, a large solar coronal mass ejection smacked into planet Earth's magnetosphere producing a severe geomagnetic storm and wide spread auroras. Captured here near local midnight from Kvaløya island outside Tromsø in northern Norway, the intense auroral glow was framed by parting rain clouds. Tinted orange, the clouds are also in silhouette as the tops of the colorful shimmering curtains of northern lights extend well over 100 kilometers above the ground. Though the auroral rays are parallel, perspective makes them appear to radiate from a vanishing point at the zenith. Near the bottom of the scene, an even more distant Pleiades star cluster and bright planet Jupiter shine on this cloudy northern night.
Image credit: Fredrick Broms