The mysterious landscape was created when a solar storm from the “Coronal Hole” brought a massive fireball to Earth, coinciding with the appearance of an unidentified object.
According to Live Science, photographers in the UK captured incredibly rare moments featuring orange auroras combined with shades of pink, yellow, and blue; not to mention a strange object – possibly a meteorite – suddenly crossing the sky.
The aurora in Scotland recently displayed a mystical orange color mixed with pink and green – (Photo: Graeme Whipps).
Orange auroras were previously thought to be theoretically invisible from Earth. However, this is the second time humanity has captured it in just a few months due to the unusual furious activity of the Sun.
In the photo published by photographer Graeme Whipps, taken from Scotland – United Kingdom, “the Northern Lights” appeared with a remarkably unusual rainbow hue.
This aurora is part of a small G2 geomagnetic storm that hit Earth at the end of November.
However, it brought along something: the CME fireball, or “coronal mass ejection.”
This bright plasma mass struck Earth’s magnetosphere just before the aurora appeared. The high-energy particles within it interacted with Earth’s magnetic field lines, creating the beautiful light known as the aurora.
Its origin is believed to be “the Coronal Hole,” a chaotic magnetic field region that emerged after a high-energy eruption right around Halloween.
The most significant anomaly is the orange color of the aurora.
The color of the aurora depends on the elements excited by the CME and their positions in the sky. The two most common aurora colors are red and green, resulting from oxygen molecules at different altitudes.
Theoretically, there are no atoms at any altitude that can produce the color orange.
According to experts collaborating with Live Science, this orange aurora is not due to a novel atom, but rather a mixture of red and green light. This can only occur in an explosive aurora, where the red and green aurora bands overlap perfectly.
The unusual orange hue was previously recorded during another geomagnetic storm in Canada on October 19.
To add to the mystery, photographer Graeme Whipps also captured an unidentified object cutting across the sky in another photo taken at the same location.
Amidst the aurora, a white light appeared due to the strange object cutting through the sky – (Photo: Graeme Whipps).
The aurora in this photo had calmed down, displaying only the usual green color, but the strange light was eye-catching.
It could be some meteorite descending and burning up in the atmosphere. So far, there have been no reports of anyone finding the new space object in the area.
