In my first year of studying at my home university, I was taking a physical geography module, in which I had to do a very big presentation on Icelandic volcanoes. As an introduction, I was talking about the phenomenon of Aurora Borealis, also known as Nordic lights. I had to explain how exactly they are being formed.
Just when we were talking about scattering in class, I found a very interesting article that dealt with scattering of electrons, which has been discovered as a possible reason for the northern lights for the first time. Usually, scattering is the reason for red skies during sunset. Scattering can be defined as “the redirection of electromagnet energy by suspended particles in the atmosphere” (GSP).
The researchers from the University of Tokyo got to witness the scattering “We, for the first time, directly observed scattering of electrons by chorus waves generating particle precipitation into the Earth’s atmosphere” (Professor Satoshi Kasahara) The electron flux that was precipitating was able to generate the pulsating aurora borealis. It has always been believed, that electrons interacting with chorus waves would be the reason for those. The scattering of the electrons has now been the reason for the visible effects in the sky. The Japanese research team has now designed an electron sensor which is attached to the Japanese ERG satellite, which enables the observance of the electrons’ movements. This enables them to watch the scattering of electrons precisely (Gabbatis, 2018).
Another interesting case of scattering that I have read about can happen on Mars. The amount of dust in the Martian atmosphere enables blue light to have a bigger impact on the atmosphere, so the blue scattered light stays closer to the sun than the yellow and red ones. This incident mainly happens around sunset, which makes the sunsets on Mars blue tinted (GSP).
Gabbatiss, J. (2018) Scattering of electrons responsible for northern lights observed for first time by scientists. Independent
http://gsp.humboldt.edu/OLM/Courses/GSP_216_Online/lesson2-1/scatter.html (accessed on 09.10.2019)
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