UAE's HOPE Mars Mission captures Auroras on red planet, shares 'never seen before' images

The HOPE orbiter spacecraft sent by the United Arab Emirates to Mars in July last year has captured some of the most fascinating images of the auroral emissions around the red planet. The pictures are of the glowing atmosphere of Mars’s night sky, and are known as the planet's ‘discrete auroras’. The images were shared by the HOPE Mars Mission official handle on Twitter. The Emirates space agency said that the data gathered by the orbiter “include far and extreme ultraviolet auroral emissions which have never been imaged before at Mars.” 

This is one of the most significant observations as these Mars images are the first-ever images of its glowing auroras.UAE space agency on its website, said, “The full set of data collected during these observations include far and extreme ultraviolet auroral emissions which have never been imaged before at Mars. The beacons of light that stand out against the dark night side disk are highly structured discrete auroras.” 

Describing the Mars auroras, the agency added that these auroras reveal “where energetic particles excite the atmosphere after being funneled down by a patchy network of crustal magnetic fields that originate from minerals on the surface of Mars.”

The UAE’s Hope orbiter has been circling the red planet since February and has captured these images through its ultraviolet spectrometer. The space agency revealed, “These three images of atomic oxygen emission at a wavelength of 103.4 nm from the planet Mars were obtained by the Emirates Mars Ultraviolet Spectrometer instrument on 22 April, 23 April, and 06 May 2021 respectively.”

These auroras reveal the presence of the magnetic fields on the Mars atmosphere, which was earlier perceived to have died out. This is because, the molten iron at the interior of the planet– which produces magnetism– has cooled.

Auroras on Earth and vs Mars

This display of light is called an aurora and can be seen from high-altitude regions on Earth. In the northern part of our globe, the polar lights are called aurora borealis or Northern Lights, and in the south, they are called aurora australis or southern lights.

The auroras on Mars are not like the ones on Earth, as on Earth they are seen only near the north and south poles, however, discrete auroras on Mars are seen all around the planet at night time.

What is an aurora?

Aurora refers to the glowing lights on the planet’s atmosphere, caused when the particles from the Sun (The Solar wind) enter its atmosphere. These harmful particles also enter the earth’s atmosphere, but our planet is shielded by the geomagnetic field, which preserves the planet from the solar wind. However, in some places at the north and south poles, these winds evade magnetic fields and interact with different gases to show glowing light in the night sky.

(image: Mars HOPE Mission Twitter)