
Aurora Trek
Photograph courtesy Antti Pietikäinen
A snowmobiler stops to admire the northern lights in Finnish Lapland on January 24.
Improved computer models and a fleet of sun-watching satellites are helping space-weather experts better predict when CMEs will strike Earth—which also allows for more precise aurora forecasts.
"We went out with snowmobiles to wait for the incoming storm," photographer Antti Pietikäinen wrote on Spaceweather.com. "Show started slowly, and after 15 minutes the landscape was green!"
Published January 25, 2012

Aurora on Ice
Photograph by Thilo Bubek
Northern lights flow over the snow-dusted mountains near Tromsø, Norway, on January 21. The stitched panorama picture also shows the auroras reflected in smooth ice, which is "normally ... covered by snow in winter time," according to photographer Thilo Bubek.
(Also see "New Aurora Pictures: Deep-Sky Lights Revealed" [April 2011].)
Published January 25, 2012
National Geographic
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