First aurora photo from Mars shows green glow in the sky
Mars doesn't have an organized planetary magnetic field like Earth, so auroras can appear anywhere in the sky. Now there's a photo of one.
Something new for the Martian tourist brochures: You might get to see auroras.
In March 2024, for the first time, scientists observed a visible green aurora on Mars. Although scientists had already detected many different types of auroras on Mars, they had all appeared at ultraviolet wavelengths invisible to the naked eye.
Scientists connected the green aurora’s appearance to high-energy particles sent by a solar storm eruption. All planets with atmospheres in the Solar System experience auroras, created by the interaction of magnetic fields with high-energy particles from the sun.
Auroras occur, both on Earth and Mars, when energetic particles from space rain down on the upper atmosphere, according to NASA. On Earth, these particles are guided toward the poles by our planet's global magnetic field. That's why auroras are seen most often around the Arctic and Antarctic.
On Mars, there is no organized planetary magnetic field to guide the particles north and south, so they can go anywhere.
“The presence of visible aurora opens a new avenue for the study of space weather events at Mars,” according to a new study published May 14 in the journal Science Advances. The study was led by Elise Wright Knutsen of the University of Oslo in Norway.
Perseverance rover captured the image
Using instruments aboard the Perseverance rover, researchers documented the first visible aurora during a solar storm eruption in 2024.
They tied the aurora, which appeared on March 18, 2024, to a coronal mass ejection from an intense solar storm.
The aurora appeared three days after the storm’s eruption on March 15, which suggests the aurora was born from charged energetic particle interactions as the shock front reached the Martian magnetosphere.