Triple APOD - August 14, 2024: Morning Aurora by Ray Wiens

This current solar maximum has been especially generous in terms of colourful aurora on earth so far. Since the historic May 8th geomagnetic storm, we've seen several more aurora shows displaying pinks and reds, a normally pretty rare occurrence even during solar maximum. The different colours come from the ionization of different gases and at different altitudes. The typical green glow comes from atomic oxygen at 'lower' altitudes, up to about 250km. The rarer colours only make an appearance under intense solar radiation, including the blues and purples from low altitude molecular nitrogen, and the red-pink glow of very high altitude atomic oxygen. While beautiful in their own right, aurora this frequent and bright can actually be a nuisance for other forms of astronomy and astrophotography, like with Ray's imaging telescope also seen in today's image!