Miami – Astronauts NASA published images of a series of aurora australis taken from the International Space Station (ISS) that were visible last weekend on the southernmost side of the planet.
“There is a lot of activity right now on the Space Station, but fortunately we are all safe and yesterday we witnessed a spectacular display of aurora australis thanks to a recent solar event,” wrote NASA astronaut Jessica Meir, on the social network X.
Meir, a member of the SpaceX Crew-12 mission, accompanied the publication of several photographs and a video in which the aurora can be clearly observed, which dyes the Earth’s atmosphere green and meanders in a similar way to a river.
The aurora australis are formed by the collision of solar particles with the Earth’s magnetic field, just like the northern lights.
Although they do not pose a serious danger to the crew of the orbital laboratory, they do expose them to a greater amount of radiation than usual.
The main difference between both types of auroras is the part of the planet in which they occur, since the southern ones occur on the southern side, while the boreal ones are visible from the northernmost latitudes.
Furthermore, the scarce presence of population centers in the southernmost part of the Earth, mainly covered by Antarctica and the oceans, makes them more difficult to perceive from the surface.
The best time to observe the aurora australis is from March to September, coinciding with winter in the southern hemisphere.