Photos | HK, Shenzhen awed by rare 'red aurora' encounter
Recently, many netizens in Shenzhen and Hong Kong shared their wonderful experience of meeting the "polar lights" on the night of Nov. 30, and uploaded photos to praise it as "like a dream".
The video circulated on the Internet shows that a "red aurora borealis" appeared at around 10:30 pm, and then reached its peak, reflecting almost the entire night sky in red; it gradually dissipated after that, and the whole process lasted for nearly half an hour.
However, auroras mostly appear in high latitude areas, where the three necessary conditions of atmosphere, magnetic field and high-energy charged particles are indispensable, and it is almost impossible for auroras to appear in Hong Kong and Shenzhen. So, what is the real "red aurora" that we see?
The Shenzhen Observatory said that at 10:25 pm on Nov. 30, China's new carrier rocket, the Changzheng-12, successfully ignited and took off from the Wenchang Commercial Space Launch Site. As the altitude increased, the air became thinner, and the rocket's tail flame gradually dispersed. In flight to a height of 200-300km, the tail flame of the engine makes the oxygen atoms at this height ionization and then the merger process produces 630nm red light, which is the "red aurora" phenomenon in the sky over the south of Dapeng Xichong in Shenzhen.
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