On December 1, Aurora appeared in Heilongjiang, Inner Mongolia and other places, and many netizens posted Aurora**, and Beijing Aurora also rushed to the hot search, attracting attention.
Auroras appeared in Heilongjiang, Inner Mongolia and other places.
Netizen: "Like a watermelon".
Last night, there were aurora lights in Heilongjiang, Inner Mongolia and other places. It is understood that the occurrence of the aurora is due to geomagnetic storm activity. Many netizens have sighed "so beautiful", because the colors are mainly red and green, and some netizens ridiculed that the aurora this time is "watermelon aurora".
According to the official Weibo news of Mentougou District, Beijing, at 19:57 on December 1, in the direction of Lingshan Mountain in the northwest of Baihua Mountain, Yang Nan, an employee of Baihuashan National Nature Reserve, photographed a rare aurora phenomenon (** in red).
According to Li Zheng, an engineer at the National Astronomical Observatories, this is the first time that the aurora has been recorded on a large scale in the city since the advent of photography technology. According to astrophotographer Pu Shi, it is very rare to photograph the aurora in Beijing during this solar activity, and if you want to observe the aurora, you need to go to a place with a high altitude and an excellent dark night environment to observe.
Why are most of the aurora lights seen in my country red?
According to China's National Geographic official Weibo account, auroras are luminous phenomena produced when the Earth's magnetosphere is disturbed by charged particles from the sun. Charged particles from the Sun settle into the upper atmosphere along the magnetic field lines at the Earth's poles and collide with particles in the neutral atmosphere, excites electron energy level transitions, resulting in different colors and forms of light.
Most of the auroras are concentrated 90-400 kilometers above the Earth. As shown in the figure below, the aurora is mainly light red above 300 km, dark red at 200-300 km, green at 100-200 km, and dark red with a mixture of blue, purple or a mixture of colors below 100 km.
Why are most of the aurora borealis seen in China red, while in the Arctic Circle they are green?This is mainly due to the fact that the surface of the earth has a certain curvature, so that the earth itself will block some distant objects. If the observation point is too far away from the aurora, you will only see the red aurora at a higher altitude.
The China Meteorological Administration issued a geomagnetic storm warning
What does it mean for us?
As the most typical solar eruption activity, a coronal mass ejection process can throw hundreds of millions of tons of solar material off the surface of the sun at a high speed of hundreds of kilometers per second, not only the kinetic energy of the huge mass and velocity convergence, but also the powerful magnetic field energy of the sun, once it hits the earth, it will cause a change in the direction and magnitude of the geomagnetic field, that is, a geomagnetic storm.
The National Space Weather Monitoring and Warning Center of the China Meteorological Administration predicts that on December 1 and 2, geomagnetic storms may occur in China, of which geomagnetic storms above moderate or even geomagnetic storms may occur on December 1, and geomagnetic activities are expected to continue until December 2.
Under this influence, the space station may be dragged by the atmosphere to cause the orbit altitude to decrease, the error of satellite navigation equipment to increase, aviation flight will face the double risk of deterioration of the communication environment and radiation across the polar region, for the public, especially pigeon players and aurora enthusiasts, in the next few days to always pay attention to space weather information.
Judging the momentum of future solar activity based on the current change in sunspot number, 2024 is still the high year of solar activity. This means that at least this winter, there is still a possibility of seeing the aurora in the north of our country.
*: China Economic Net WeChat Comprehensive CCTV News Client, China National Geographic Official Weibo, China Meteorological Administration Official Weibo, Beijing Mentougou District ** Official Weibo, etc.
Edited by Jiang Bo Du Haifeng Reviewed by Tu Xiaofeng.