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Gorgeous Auroras Could Light Up Martian Sky
NASA has already announced that evidence from the MAVEN probe indicates that the solar wind was responsible for stripping away most of Mars ancient atmosphere; it seems that it also produces some spectacular auroral displays.
Researchers working on NASA's Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) mission hosted a news conference this afternoon (Nov. 5) to discuss the orbiter's observations about the Red Planet's loss of atmosphere due to solar wind, and they also shared some details about MAVEN's measurements of Mars auroras.
"A new kind of aurora was observed at Mars that frankly surprised us, and this was aurorae in a part of the atmosphere that is above regions that don't have a magnetic field at all," Dave Brain, MAVEN co-investigator and researcher at the University of Colorado Boulder's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP), said during the news conference. "It's strange to think about, based on our personal experience, aurorae that don't take place in magnetic fields."
.............//snip
"If you're standing on the night side of Mars in a place where there's no light pollution, and looking up at the sky, you could see the whole sky light up at one of these events," Brain said. "It would be magnificent."
