A Whale of an Aurora over Swedish Forest

*Text copied from NASA

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What's that in the sky? An aurora. A large coronal mass ejection occured on our Sun earlier this month, throwing a cloud of fast-moving electrons, protons and ions toward the Earth.

Part of this cloud impacted our Earth's magnetosphere and, bolstered by a sudden gap, resulted in spectacular auroras being seen at some high northern latitudes.

Featured here is a particularly photogenic auroral corona captured above a forest in Sweden from a scenic perch overlooking the city of Östersund.

To some, this shimmering green flow of recombining atmospheric oxygen might appear like a large whale, but feel free to share what it looks like to you.

The unusually quiet Sun of the past few years has now ed. As our Sun now approaches a solar maximum in its 11-year solar magnetic cycle, dramatic auroras like this are sure to continue.