When photographer Josh Dury set out on the night of August 12-13 to photograph the peak of the Perseid meteor shower, he had no idea that he would be treated to a truly special cosmic spectacle.
The stunning image captured by Dury not only shows Perseid meteors raining through the sky, but also Northern Lights and a rare atmospheric glow known as the SAR arc, adjacent to the Andromeda and Triangulum galaxies.
“Considering that there is so much going on in the astronomical scene this evening and that you can also see the Andromeda and Triangulum galaxies, this is definitely a once-in-a-lifetime photo,” Dury said in an email to Space.com.
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Dury chose 11th century Corfe Castle as the backdrop for his image because he had photographed from this location on May 10 during the epic geomagnetic storm G5 and captured some incredible scenes.
Just too happy with these shots of Friday’s aurora superstorm!!#NorthernLights #Aurora #Auroraborealis #Astrophotography #Astrophoto #Astro #Space #Astronomy #Landscape @BBCEarth @NatGeoUK @CorfeCastleUK @DorsetMag @BBCBreakfast @BBCSpotlight @BBCBristol @MetOfficeSpace pic.twitter.com/3NojAWJMQrMay 12, 2024
And with strong G3 conditions forecast for the peak of the Perseid meteor shower, Dury set out to try his luck again.
Suffice it to say that it was once again a resounding success.
“When I took the photo, I didn’t expect the Northern Lights to be visible. I just tried,” Dury told Space.com. “In 3 1/2 hours, I was able to get 50 partial exposures of the Perseid meteor shower emerging from the radiant,” Dury continued.
Then the sky lit up with a cacophony of colors.
“To my surprise, however, my phone started giving notifications about possible aurora borealis. A moment later, I was able to use the camera to photograph the aurora borealis while the meteor shower was taking place,” Dury explained.
And as if that wasn’t enough, another hidden gem revealed itself to Dury as he looked through his raw images of the majestic scene.
“As if that was already a surprise, I was quite shocked when I realized in my snapshots that I had photographed the stable red arc (SAR), which was only visible with the camera,” exclaimed Dury.
But that’s not all! The highly detailed image also includes popular sky observation objects such as the Andromeda Galaxy (M31) and the harder to discover Triangulum Galaxy (M33).
Phenomena explained
Perseid meteor shower
The Perseid meteor shower is an annual shower that occurs between mid-July and late August. Perseids occur when Earth flies through debris – chunks of ice and rock – left behind by comet Swift-Tuttle, which flew past Earth in 1992. As the debris enters Earth’s atmosphere, it burns up in bright flashes of light. These Perseid “shooting stars” appear to radiate from the constellation Perseus, for which the shower is named. The Perseid meteor shower reaches its peak around August 11-12, when Earth flies through the densest part of the debris.
Northern Lights (Aurora Borealis)
The Northern Lights (Aurora borealis), also known in the Southern Hemisphere as the Southern Lights or Aurora australis, is a colorful spectacle that demonstrates the effect of our protective magnetic field.
When energetic particles from the sun When they hit Earth’s magnetosphere (a region of space dominated by Earth’s magnetic field), our planet’s magnetic field redirects the particles toward the poles as they interact with our atmosphere, releasing energy and causing the atmosphere to fluoresce.
SAR-Bow
The strange deep red band of light is called a stable auroral red arc (SAR), which is somewhat misleading since it is neither an aurora nor a stable according to SpaceWeather.comSAR arches were first discovered in 1956 and have fascinated scientists ever since.
SAR arcs are located at an altitude of about 450 kilometers and typically accompany strong geomagnetic storms (at least G3 level). They are formed when thermal energy from the Earth’s ring current system enters the subauroral upper atmosphere. The ring current is a strong electrical current carried by energetic ions (charged particles) that orbit the earth. SARs glow deep red due to atomic oxygen in the upper atmosphereThe human eye is fairly insensitive to light of this wavelength, and so SARs are usually too faint to see. This explains why Dury did not notice the existence of the signal until he was processing his images.
SAR arcs have some similarities to another subauroral optical phenomenon known as STEVE (Strong Thermal Emission Velocity Enhancement), which was discovered around 2016. There was even Reports of a SAR bow transforming into STEVE.
Originally published on Space.com.
