Aurora on Mars

Aurora were first discovered on Mars back in 2004 by the Mars Express mission. Since NASA now has multiple mission going to the red planet, the have now confirmed and even mapped locations were aurora are likely to occur.

Mars, like Earth has a magnetic field. And research has shown that magnetic fields play a role in the generation of aurora, as electrons in the solar wind pass through. Exactly how these particles interact with the field, and how the resulting ionization of the upper levels of the atmosphere is still a mystery.

On Earth the aurora are commonly known as the 'northern' or 'southern' lights. These occur mainly up in the polar regions of our planet. Occasionally during high sunspot activity they can reach down into the lower latitudes. Our sun is climbing out of a sunspot minimum, so there should be a slow and steady upswing in auroral activity over the couple of years.

I have only seen the aurora on two occasions. Once while on a night trip through North Dakota, and again in Arizona during the big event in 2001. We used to watch for aurora reports in manual weather observations each night to see if they were getting close to our location. Since many weather stations are now automated, you do not get to see the aurora reports as much these days.

The Arizona sighting was one of the more amazing nights I had under the stars. At first, I thought there was a bad forest fire occurring, as the horizon was colored bright red and orange. Then bright white streamers shot out from above. It was impressive.