These incredible photographs of the aurora borealis captured the moment the lights formed the outline of a phoenix – the giant fire-eating bird common in many ancient mythologies.

 With outstretched wings and a striking bird-shaped profile, the image – captured by photographer Hallgrimur P Helgason – wowed stargazers in Kaldarsel.

Mr Helgason, 64, said that the bird showed up in the night sky an hour after he got there and started snapping.

He said: ‘It’s really a thrill shooting the aurora, especially when they are so playful like they were that night. I have to admit that I always get an adrenalin kick when the lights burst out like that – that particular shot was the top one of the night.’

He uses a camera and tripod to photograph the lights, and advises snapping in the dark away from city light pollution and never using a flash.

He said the Northern Lights were mainly showing in green and yellow colours when he was shooting that night but also sported red and blue, suggesting the aurora was strong. (Source)


The Northern Lights feature prominently in Norse mythology. One legend suggests that the lights were reflections or glow from the shields and armour of the Valkyrie, female warriors who would choose who may die in battle and who may live to fight another day. Dying in battle seemed to occupy Norse mythology quite a bit and the Aurora was also believed to be “Bifrost Bridge”, a glowing and pulsating arch which led those fallen in battle to the warriors final resting place in Valhalla.


Saami indigenous people believe these lights are their ancestors visiting them. The Salteaus Indians of eastern Canada and the Kwakiutl and Tlingit of Southeastern Alaska interpreted the northern lights as the dancing of human spirits. The Inuits who lived on the lower Yukon River believed that the aurora was the dance of animal spirits, especially those of deer, wolf, seals, salmon and beluga. In Finland, a mystical fox was thought to have created the aurora, its bushy tail spraying snow and throwing sparks into the sky.

 Marja-Terttu Karlsson, who resides in Pajala, Swedish Lapland, did not realise how lucky she had been when she was out to photograph the northern lights last week.Only when she uploaded the images to the computer, she recognised the familiar shape that appeared right before her eyes:

– I thought "oh my God, it resembles a fox or a wolf or something." I didn't know when I photographed what I got. It was amazing, she says.

Northern lights are common in the arctic region of the northern hemisphere and are caused by the solar wind colliding with the atmosphere. Recent years northern lights have been getting more common, caused by increased solar activity.

Ms Karlssons picture of the celestial animal has since become a viral success. It has been shared thousands of times on Facebook, but has also raised suspicion. Several people have been in contact with the photographer herself, to question the authenticity of the picture. – They think it is fake, but I can assure all sceptics that it's genuine, Ms Karlsson says to SVT (Source)

On Saturday April 20 of this year, two sunspots suddenly formed in the sun’s northern hemisphere. The sunspots were given the names AR1726 and AR1727. No one knows if they will erupt or flare - that remains to be seen. Also unknown is whether the spots will be pointing toward Earth when or if that happens.

This near and next the sun will be spurting all manner of plasma. Sunspots are bursting forth in solar flares and coronal mass ejections every few days. A few of them have shot straight at the Earth, though none have proved to be stronger than a medium-class flare and are not dangerous.

Although they don’t tend to do much damage, they do make the aurora borealis really brilliant. The most recent spectacular one to delight us occurred on April 11th. It was an M-Class flare of around a magnitude of 6.5 that jolted the Northern Lights. It was the strongest solar flare and CME this year so far, NASA said.

“AR1726 is the fastest-growing and, so far, the most active. It is crackling with C-class flares and seems capable of producing even stronger M-class eruptions. Because of the sunspot's central location on the solar disk, any explosions this weekend will be Earth-directed. Stay tuned,” according to Spaceweather.com.

Below is what happened after just such a sunspot erupted and ignited the aurora borealis on March 17, 2013. It was photographed by Göran Strand from Östersund, Sweden. The aurora resulting from the CME’s hit onto Earth’s magnetic field and was captured with an all-sky camera.

The solar storm that swept past Earth over the weekend didn't disrupt any power grids, but it did turn on the auroral lights for skywatchers over a wide swath of North America, extending at least as far down as Arkansas.

SpaceWeather.com cataloged stunning photos from the usual places in northern climes, including Canadian provinces as well as the northern tier of the United States. But this particular solar storm — sparked by last Thursday's big coronal mass ejection, or CME — didn't stop there. Photographers sent in pictures from Arkansas as well as Ohio, Nebraska, Utah, California and other locales well south of the usual places. There were auroral images as well from Scotland, Hungary, and yes, from New Zealand, Tasmania and the South Pole at the other end of the world.

Observers knew they were in for something big, due to the fact that the flare associated with the solar eruption reached an extreme level of X1.4 on the classification scale for solar outbursts. The radio blast from a sunspot region known as AR 1520 resulted in a strong radio blackout for some high-frequency communication systems, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Space Weather Prediction Center.

Extreme solar storms have been known to knock out electrical grids as well as satellites, but this one apparently had no ill effects. Today, the prediction center said the stormy space weather "is finally showing signs of weakening."

"No further significant activity has occurred, and while Region 1520 has become less of a threat, it still has the potential for further activity," the center reported.

The sun is heading toward the high point of its 11-year activity cycle, with the maximum expected next year. That means this weekend's storm could just be a foretaste of what's ahead for aurora-watchers and space weather forecasters over the coming months. In the meantime, check out this gallery featuring the latest pictures from the world's greatest light show:
Source

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A giant solar flare shot out of a sunspot Thursday, hitting Earth with a powerful burst of X-ray and ultraviolet radiation. Solar researchers expect a moderate geomagnetic storm to follow and strike Earth this weekend, causing satellite glitches, power disruptions and colorful auroras possibly as far south as Washington D.C.

At 12:11 p.m. EDT, the flare began unleashing about a billion hydrogen bombs’ worth of energy. Radiation temporarily jammed some radio frequencies for about an hour.

Right behind the flare is a belch of solar atmosphere called a coronal mass ejection, or CME, which is now traveling toward Earth at about 3 million mph. The resulting solar storm at Earth, which NASA predicts will be a G2 to G4 (on a scale of one to five), should start Saturday morning and conclude by Sunday’s end.

“It’s the biggest of the summer so far,” said heliophysicist Alex Young of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. “This could produce auroras as far south as northern California and Alabama [and] into central UK and Europe or southern New Zealand.”

“At its worst it could lead to some intermittent satellite/radio navigation problems, surface charging on satellites and power grid fluctuations,” Young wrote in an email to Wired. “But the larger storm is less likely, these are just rough estimates.”

Every solar cycle, which is an 11-year period that ramps up activity toward the end, produces between 150 and 180 large flares and related CMEs. This year has been one of the most active in recorded space weather with a flare almost four times larger striking a glancing blow to Earth in March.

If and when a solar megastorm hits Earth — and there’s a 1-in-8 chance by 2020 — the outcome would be much different. A powerful CME could temporarily peel away a significant portion of Earth’s protective magnetic shield, exposing satellites, power grids and other electronics to disruptive magnetic fields and radiation.

“We have more to expect from the sun through late 2013, perhaps through the beginning of 2014,” Young said. “That’s when we’ll reach solar maximum and see we’ll continue to see more solar eruptions.”


Image: An orbiting spacecraft called the Solar Dynamics Observatory captured this view of the sun about an hour before it launched an X-class solar flare. The purple coloring shows the strength of magnetic fields of the sun. (NASA/SDO/AIA) [high-res]
SOURCE: Wired

Researchers at Aalto University in Finland have located where the sounds associated with the northern lights are created. The source of the auroral sounds that have been described in folktales and by wilderness wanderers was recently discovered. It has been found that they are formed about 70 meters above the ground level in the measured case.

Researchers were able to locate the sound sources by installing three separate microphones in an observation site where the auroral sounds were recorded. The sounds captured by the microphones were then compared and they were able to determine the location of the sound source. The aurora borealis had been seen at the observation site. A typical pattern of the northern lights episodes was shown by the simultaneous measurements of the geomagnetic disturbances.

Professor Unto K. Laine from Aalto University described it this way, "Our research proved that, during the occurrence of the northern lights, people can hear natural auroral sounds related to what they see. In the past, researchers thought that the aurora borealis was too far away for people to hear the sounds it made.

This is true. However, our research proves that the source of the sounds that are associated with the aurora borealis we see is likely caused by the same energetic particles from the sun that create the northern lights far away in the sky. These particles or the geomagnetic disturbance produced by them seem to create sound much closer to the ground."

Details about how the auroral sounds are created are still a mystery to the researchers because the sounds do not occur regularly when the northern lights are seen. The recorded, unamplified sounds are similar to crackles or muffled bangs which last for only a short period of time. Others have described them as distant sounds and sputters. Because of these different descriptions, it is suspected that there are several ways that these auroral sounds are formed. Some of these sounds are so soft that it is very difficult to distinguish them from ambient noise.