February 13, 2012 - Auroras Gone Wild

Published in cooperation with The Planetary Society

Spend the year in space, one week at a time

Recent Weeks

May 14, 2012 - Monkey Nebula

May 7, 2012 - Getting a Grip on INTELSAT

April 30, 2012 - Dust in the Wind

April 23, 2012 - Celebrate Astronomy Day

April 16, 2012 - Rover Rides Again

April 9, 2012 - Mercury’s Marvelous Morphology

April 2, 2012 - A Matter of Truss

March 26, 2012 - Hubble Bubble

March 19, 2012 - Rocket Pioneer Centennial

March 12, 2012 - Southern Lights on Saturn

March 5, 2012 - A New Star in Town

February 27, 2012 - Hubble Upgrade

February 20, 2012 - Sideways Supernova

February 13, 2012 - Auroras Gone Wild

February 6, 2012 - Hubble Telescope Tune-Up

January 30, 2012 - Lunar Orbiter Liftoff

January 23, 2012 - Magellan Turns up the Stereo

January 16, 2012 - Southern Sibling Sees Stars

January 9, 2012 - Hitching a Ride Home

January 2, 2012 - Transforming the Space Frontier

December 26, 2011 - These Laws Can't Be Broken

December 19, 2011 - Long and Winding Road

December 12, 2011 - Blast from the Past

December 5, 2011 - It’s Just Like Folding a Map

November 28, 2011 - A Warmer, Wetter Mars

November 21, 2011 - Spy in the Sky

Customer Comment

I have been buying the Calendar for myself and my two brothers (both avid amateur astronomers) for years as a way to keep up the interest and the connection. Thank you!

--Andrew K., Whittier, CA

Read more comments

2012 Desk Calendar

FREE U.S. Shipping
SAVE 25% to 45%
Money-back guarantee

144 full-color pages
6" x 9", spiral bound
Art-quality paper

Weekly photo essay
Daily Moon phases
Night sky events
Space trivia
Holidays
Room for notes/appts

FREE Weekly E-Mail

Customer Comment

It's beautiful.

--Gloria H., Deptford, NJ

Read more comments

The Week in Space

February 13-19, 2012

Auroras Gone Wild The displays of slowly-shimmering lights visible at night in far northern and southern latitudes are known as the aurora borealis and aurora australis. These glowing ribbons of light occur when highly charged particles from the Sun collide with atoms high in Earth’s atmosphere. This ionization process releases photons which we see as green, brown, red, or bluish lights. Five years ago this week, NASA launched the Time History of Events and Macroscale Interactions during Substorms (THEMIS) mission, a fleet of five spacecraft, to understand what causes substorms—sudden and frequent intensifications in the auroras. THEMIS discovered that substorms are triggered by magnetic reconnection, a sort of whiplash action in Earth’s magnetic field that releases trapped solar energy.

Image credit: NASA / Goddard Space Flight Center Conceptual Image Lab