10 MAY 2021
Not all auroras slither through the sky like snakes. Some – called diffuse aurora – are more like an even glow dispersed throughout the sky.
Scientists know a fair bit about these diffuse auroras, but an old video from 2002 revealing what seems to be an undocumented auroral phenomenon shows we definitely don t know everything.
They appear as a section of diffuse aurora that rapidly brightens, then disappears and also erases the background aurora. Then, over the course of several tens of seconds, the diffuse aurora recovers to its original brightness.
The team, made up scientists from the University of Iowa, University of Calgary, and NASA, has dubbed the phenomenon diffuse auroral erasers .