(ORDO NEWS) — Comet NOWISE, a luminous ball of cosmic ice with two multicolored tails sweeps across the northern hemisphere this week. On Tuesday, she was joined by three space “colleagues”.
The above image shows a meteor glowing for a fraction of a second, an aurora flickering over Comet NOWISE, and purple ribbons dancing in a mysterious atmospheric phenomenon called Strong Increased Thermal Radiation (STEVE).
This picture was one of 600 photographer Donna Las took on Tuesday night outside her farm in Manitoba, Canada. Las volunteers for a civic science project called Auroras, funded by NASA and the National Science Foundation, which first opened STEVE in 2016.
The aurora appears when charged particles from the Sun interact with oxygen and nitrogen in the Earth‘s atmosphere, but STEVE’s origins are still a mystery.
From the photographer’s perspective, the multicolored lights matched perfectly with the fleeting phenomenon of a meteor – a cosmic rock evaporating in Earth’s atmosphere – all while Comet NOWISE was shining brightly on the horizon.
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