VIDEO | Northern Lights in Italy, the spectacular images

The Italian skies showed a particular brightness in late Sunday afternoon:it was a polar aurora

ROME – In the afternoon of Sunday 5 November the Italian skies were colored in an unusual way: the usual sunsets were filled with intense pinks and fiery reds, with a particular brightness.What happened? An aurora borealis occurred, a very unusual phenomenon in our latitudes.

NORTHERN LIGHTS, WHAT IS IT

The Aurora Polaris is a phenomenon in which protons and electrons of solar wind they collide with the ionosphere terrestrial, giving rise to the emission of light in various wavelengths.The polar lights are called 'borealis' when they occur in the northern hemisphere (ours) and 'southern' when they occur in the southern hemisphere.Polar auroras, as the name suggests, are usually visible in areas around the Earth's poles. In periods of particularly intense activity of the Sun they can also appear further south.It had rarely happened in Italy, even more rarely in the skies of central and southern Italy.

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THE NORTHERN LIGHTS IN THE ITALIAN SKIES ON SUNDAY 5 NOVEMBER

Spectacular images were published on social media.Among the first to notice it were the inhabitants of Northern Italy.The same governor of Emilia Romagna, Stefano Bonaccini, shared a photo of Catia Greppi of Meteo Emilia-Romagna taken at Port Garibaldi, province of Ferrara.As the minutes passed, the Northern Lights became clearly visible even in more southern areas, as evidenced by the shots of Manciano (Grosseto) and Palidoro (Rome).

A pink glow, immortalized from the summit of Mount Alfeo, a peak on the border between the provinces of Genoa and Piacenza. Liguria is also among the Italian regions that have observed the Northern Lights in their skies. The event, more unique than rare in these latitudes, was captured by a webcam of the Limet network in Val Trebbia, yesterday evening at 6.21pm, at 1,651 meters above sea level.“The Northern Lights were also spotted in Liguria - testifies the Ligurian governor, Giovanni Toti, posting the image on his social channels - the shot shows the typical pink color of the sky, clearly visible thanks to the absence of light pollution. A rare and extraordinary spectacle."

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ASTROPHYSICIAN GIANLUCA MASI:“POLAR AURORA VISIBLE IN ITALY, HERE'S WHY”

The phenomenon of the polar auroras "is a clear manifestation of the interaction between the physical activity of the Sun and our planet - explains astrophysicist Gianluca Masi, founder of the Virtual Telescope Project -. On this occasion we were able to appreciate a similar event from latitudes usually excluded from the show. What happened is that our star has given rise to two important coronal mass ejection events– these are plasma, electrons and protons-, charged particles transported by the solar wind that have reached the earth, interacting with our magnetosphere. A complex phenomenology has been triggered that calls into question our ionosphere and in the end the visual effect is the switching on of these magnificent lights in the sky which are the auroras.It was precisely the exceptional nature of the physical phenomena linked to the Sun broaden the geographical area from which to appreciate the effects of those solar events on our atmosphere. An exceptional solar activity has allowed the visibility of the corresponding phenomena, the auroras, from latitudes from which they are not usually seen“.

“From memory I remember that about twenty years ago there was a similar phenomenon. I personally remember seeing an aurora polaris from Rome– says Masi, who observed the phenomenon of November 5th from the Manciano station of the Virtual Telescope Project-.There was a more modest one a few weeks ago from more northern latitudes, but nothing like this phenomenon, observed from almost the entire country."