UAE's Hope captures first-ever images of auroras on Mars

United Arab Emirates’ Hope probe which arrived on Mars earlier this year recently captured striking images of auroras lighting up the Martian sky.

Scientists hadbeen privy to the existence of Martian auroras for some time now, but the phenomena hadn’t been captured until now. Using its Emirates Mars Ultraviolet Spectrometer instrument, Hope captured the auroras at a wavelength of 103.4 nanometres.

This region of the electromagnetic spectrum has wavelengths that fall short of visible light, but still longer than x-ray radiation. Martian auroras cannot be perceived by humans. Like auroras on Earth, the Martian ones are also created by electrically charged particles called ions sent by the Sun.

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Once these ions reach the Martian atmosphere, they go deeper into the planet’s thin atmosphere, propelled by magnetic fields. These fields are created by deposits of magnetised minerals in Mars’ crust. The auroras are then created after the ions expel oxygen atoms into the sky.

In a statement last week, the UAE said that this occurrence “provide(s) an unprecedented perspective on these uniquely Martian aurorae”.

Mars once had a rich and thick atmosphere which allowed liquid water to thrive on its surface. Then, the planet was kept in place by a global magnetic field, like the one on Earth.

The dynamo effect persisted on Mars, caused by molten liquid in the core of planet revolving around another solid core in the opposite direction of the planet’s rotation just like Earth.

But over time, Mars lost most of its atmosphere, which scientists believe was a result of the planet’s core cooling more quickly than Earth’s. It caused the planet to resemble the deserted wasteland of today.

The UAE is set to make its scientific data from the ongoing Mars probe public in September.