Aurora over South Pole Telescope in Antarctica
[No Audio] The aurora australis or southern lights over the U.S. South Pole Telescope (SPT) during an active period. Auroras are produced when the Earth's magnetosphere is sufficiently disturbed by the solar wind that the trajectories of charged particles in both solar wind and magnetospheric plasma, mainly in the form of electrons and protons, precipitate them into the upper atmosphere (thermosphere/exosphere) due to Earth's magnetic field, where their energy is lost. The resulting ionization and excitation of atmospheric constituents emits light of varying color and complexity. [Wikipedia]
The South Pole Telescope (SPT) is a submillimeter observatory in Antarctica that performs measurements of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) and the dark energy driving the acceleration of the universe's expansion. The observatory is also part of the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), a globe-spanning multi-telescope project that captured the first image of a black hole at the center of a nearby galaxy. The SPT project is a collaboration between the University of Chicago, the University of California at Berkeley, Case Western Reserve University, the University of Illinois, and the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian.
Video Credit: Timelapse by Geoff Chen/South Pole Telescope Team
Duration: 20 seconds
Capture Date: July 27, 2020
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