Watch | Extremely rare sight of dancing 'aurora curls' caught on camera

A sight to behold! A very rare videoof auroras dancing overhead wascaptured by astrophotographer Jeff Dai while he was spotting northern lights above Kerid Crater, South Iceland. The video shows a rippling green aurora curling up in a dance, as a result of Earth’s magnetic field.

The video was recorded on January 16 by Dai, which causes our magnetosphere to “ring like a bell”, as described by Spaceweather.com.

To explain this phenomenon better, Xing-Yu Li, a ULF wave expert at Peking University in Beijing, China, suggested people imagine Earth’s magnetic field like a guitar string, quoting Spaceweather.com. He said that when we imagine magnetic fields as strings, it is easy to see “vibrations in that string” that have a wavelength of several kilometres.

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What makes this occurrence so special?

This rare instance is a delight to the eyes, but only when one has extensive instruments to capture it. What makes this occurrence special is that normally such pulsations are only visible to highly sensitive magnetic instruments. On these instruments, they are recorded as squiggly lines on a chart recorder.

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But here, the energetic particles flowed down Earth’s rippling geomagnetic field, triggering a bright aurora light show that illuminated the wave across the star-studded sky.

"They rippled across the zenith for several minutes,” Dai wrote on Instagram.

Watch here.

Auroras are created when energised particles from the sun’s solar wind are deflected towards Earth’s poles by our planet’s magnetic field. These particles then interact with atoms and molecules in the atmosphere, distributing energy, that in turn causes the atmosphere to light up in fluorescence.

The different colours of auroras are the result of chemical compositions present in Earth’s atmosphere.

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"Auroras tell us many things about Earth's upper atmosphere, including its density, composition, flow speeds, and the strength of electrical currents flowing in the upper atmosphere,”space physicist Elizabeth MacDonald told Space.com.

"These in turn tell us about the Earth's magnetic field, how it extends into space, and how it changes dynamically," MacDonald added.

As per reports, aurora displays have been much better in recent years due to increased solar activity.

(With inputs from agencies)