Astrographer captures rare aurora curl over Iceland

On a recent trip to Iceland, an astrophotographer recorded a very rare meteorological occurrence.

Astrophotographer Jeff Dai uploaded a video to Instagram showing aurora curls in the night sky over the Kerid Crater in southern Iceland, with ripples of green light, NDTV reported.

He described how the aurora lasted "several minutes" before going out.

Notably, it is thought that fluctuations in the Earth's magnetic field create this incredibly unusual event.

In the caption, he wrote: “Mesoscale Auroral Curls over Iceland. The view highlights the wave in the middle of the frame. It's still a hot topic for the experts. The specialist told me that the formation of these curl-like structures may be connected with flow shear driven by ultra-low-frequency waves.

"These curls are fine structures in the poleward boundary of multiple arcs formed by longitudinally arranged field-aligned current pairs. It looks like the Auroral Undulations Triggered by Kelvin-Helmholtz Waves."

Dai shared the video a few days ago, and since then, the post has accumulated hundreds of likes and comments.

The BBC reported that although aurora curls are normally invisible and can only be seen with sophisticated scientific equipment, they occasionally become visible under the correct circumstances.

It is unknown what causes this phenomenon to occur. Nonetheless, some specialists think that pressures generated by incredibly low-frequency waves are responsible for the development of curls.

Some claim that they are also created by solar particles vibrating enormous waves in Earth's magnetic field.