Where it is: Over the North Pole, as seen from about 75,000 miles away
The debut images from a new Earth-observing satellite have just given us a view of the impossible: giant auroras rippling over the North Pole in broad daylight.
To human eyes, auroras come out only at night and rarely stray from the poles. That's what makes these first observations from the joint European-Chinese Smile mission, which officially began science operations this week, so special.
Smile tested its soft X-ray imager on the light of the distant supernova remnant Cassiopeia A (center), located 11,000 light-years from Earth. (Image credit: ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO )
The view alone is worth smiling about, but the new images also promise exciting science to come. Taken just two weeks after scientists first turned Smile's Ultraviolet Aurora Imager on, the observations show that the satellite's instruments are working as they should and that the joint European Space Agency (ESA) and Chinese Academy of Sciences mission can officially begin.
Related storiesLaunched on May 19, Smile will spend the next three years watching Earth from a highly elliptical orbit that takes it about 75,000 miles (121,000 kilometers) over the North Pole — about a third of the way to the moon. From there, Smile can observe the North Pole for a record-breaking 45 hours at a time, offering an unprecedented view of solar activity there.
This week, scientists also tested the spacecraft's soft X-ray imager by pointing it at the distant supernova remnant Cassiopeia A, located about 11,000 light-years from Earth (image above). Although the camera is working fine, the detector is still picking up a bit too much light when aimed at Earth, so it will require a bit more calibration from scientists on the ground.
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