{"id":113299,"date":"2020-09-22T10:23:26","date_gmt":"2020-09-22T17:23:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2020\/09\/rosetta-spacecraft-detects-unexpected-ultraviolet-aurora-at-a-comet"},"modified":"2020-09-22T10:23:26","modified_gmt":"2020-09-22T17:23:26","slug":"rosetta-spacecraft-detects-unexpected-ultraviolet-aurora-at-a-comet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2020\/09\/rosetta-spacecraft-detects-unexpected-ultraviolet-aurora-at-a-comet","title":{"rendered":"Rosetta spacecraft detects unexpected ultraviolet aurora at a comet"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/rosetta-spacecraft-detects-unexpected-ultraviolet-aurora-at-a-comet2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Data from Southwest Research Institute-led instruments aboard ESA\u2019s Rosetta spacecraft have helped reveal auroral emissions in the far ultraviolet around a comet for the first time.<\/p>\n<p>At Earth, auroras are formed when charged particles from the Sun follow our planet\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/magnetic+field+lines\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">magnetic field lines<\/a> to the north and south poles. There, solar particles strike atoms and molecules in Earth\u2019s atmosphere, creating shimmering curtains of colorful light in high-latitude skies. Similar phenomena have been seen at various planets and moons in our <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/solar+system\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">solar system<\/a> and even around a distant star. SwRI\u2019s instruments, the Alice far-ultraviolet (FUV) spectrograph and the Ion and Electron Sensor (IES), aided in detecting these novel phenomena at <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/comet\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">comet<\/a> 67P\/Churyumov-Gerasimenko (67P\/C-G).<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCharged particles from the Sun streaming towards the comet in the solar wind interact with the gas surrounding the comet\u2019s icy, dusty nucleus and create the auroras,\u201d said SwRI Vice President Dr. Jim Burch who leads IES. \u201cThe IES instrument detected the electrons that caused the aurora.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Data from Southwest Research Institute-led instruments aboard ESA\u2019s Rosetta spacecraft have helped reveal auroral emissions in the far ultraviolet around a comet for the first time. At Earth, auroras are formed when charged particles from the Sun follow our planet\u2019s magnetic field lines to the north and south poles. There, solar particles strike atoms and [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":513,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-113299","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-particle-physics","category-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113299","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/513"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=113299"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113299\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=113299"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=113299"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=113299"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}