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Written by spacetravel.org
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Thursday, 09 June 2005 22:47 |
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The Mars Express spacecraft has seen a display of lights on Mars that resembles the auroras on Earth. The Earths auroras are caused by charged particles from the solar wind pouring down the Earths magnetic field lines and hitting molecules of gas in the atmosphere, causing the molecules to glow. Auroras on Earth appear around the poles, because the Earths magnetic field radiates outside of its poles. Mars has no intrinsic magnetic field. Jean-Loup Bertaux and his team from the National Center for Scientific Research in Verrières-le-Buisson, France have discovered that the Martian solar particles flowed toward an area of highly magnetized rock, creating beams of light instead of diffuse, Earth-like auroras.
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