[imagesource:  Thomas Pesquet / Flickr]

The southern lights, or aurora australis if you enjoy sounding fancy, don’t get as much street cred as their northern counterparts.

That doesn’t mean they can’t put on a show, and there are few seats in the house better to watch from than the one occupied by European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Thomas Pesquet.

He’s based at the International Space Station (ISS) and has made a habit of sharing beautiful photos and videos on social media.

From a vantage point of around 400 kilometres above Earth, Pesquet captured some remarkable footage of aurora australis.

His caption read:

Sometimes aurora seem to creep over the horizon and envelop our globe. Under the technological powerhouse of Canadarm the Station’s solar panels and one of our radio antennas, this timelapse passes the aurora so you can marvel at the stars and ends on a sunrise.

It really is quite a sight:

He also captured this timelapse video, with the camera set up to take pictures at regular intervals:

This via Science Alert:

Auroras in general are the result of charged particles from the Sun hitting our planet. The particles get channeled to the poles by the Earth’s magnetic field, then interact with particles in our atmosphere.

This stream of solar wind, as it’s known, is always washing over Earth, but sometimes eruptions on the Sun send bigger surges of particles, making striking auroras like this one.

Good job, nature.

I’d give Pesquet a follow so you don’t miss out on his wonderful snaps.

 

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A post shared by Thomas Pesquet (@thom_astro)

[source:sciencealert]