Red Aurora australis sets the night on fire [video]
More rare than the green auroras we’ve seen so often lately are the red auroras, and Alex Cherny spent two years trying to get the footage shown in this time lapse of the Aurora australis.
According to Cherney:
The red color of this aurora is caused by the charged particles from the Sun exciting oxygen atoms high in the Earth's atmosphere. Hopefully there will be more to come as Sun's activity increases in 2012-13.
NASA confirms this kind of brilliant display is more common when sunspot activity is high and is seen more often in lower latitudes.
