Northern and southern lights are not exclusive to our planet . Light present from charge particles are ascertain on other celestial body of the solar system too , although often in other wavelengths of lighting . Now , astronomers have discovered that even comets can experience aurorae .
An international team of researchers used information from the European Space Agency ’s Rosetta mission of Comet 67P / Churyumov - Gerasimenko . As describe inNature Astronomy , the team discovered that the comet has an ultraviolet glow created by load particles coming from the Sun .
" ab initio , we thought the ultraviolet emission at comet 67P were phenomenon known as ' dayglow , ' a process cause by solar photons interact with cometary gas , " co - generator Dr Joel Parker , from Southwest Research Institute , in astatement . " We were amazed to chance upon that the ultraviolet radiation emission are aurora , drive not by photons , but by electrons in the solar current of air that come apart apart water and other corpuscle in the comatoseness and have been accelerated in the comet ’s nearby environment . The resulting excited atoms make this distinctive light . "
Aurorae on Earth and on planets like Jupiter are a result of the charismatic fields . On Mars , instead , they hap without a charismatic theater and are raise from the Sun ’s protonshitting the flimsy atmosphere of the Red Planet .
Comet 67P does n’t have an air but it does have a comatoseness – a fuzzed , gassy envelope produced by the release of flatulency trap in the glacial nucleus of the comet . When electron from the solar wind strike this gas , they produce aurora .
Detecting these light display was n’t easy and the squad had to combine every single instrument from Rosetta to take them . The Light Within are not like the ones we can see at higher latitude on Earth .
" The glow surrounding 67P / C - G is one of a sort . By labor into data from numerous legal document on Rosetta and linking them together , we ’ve discovered that this glow is aurorean in nature : it ’s make by a mix of cognitive process , some seen at Jupiter ’s moons Ganymede and Europa and others at Earth and Mars , " lead story author of the new field Professor Marina Galand , from the Department of Physics at Imperial , said in astatement .
Rosetta ended its mission just over three years ago when the spacecraft was clangor - land on the comet .
