Check out this absolutely unreal picture of Earth's auroras snapped by NASA astronaut

NASA astronaut and Expedition 68 Flight Engineer Josh Cassada on Tuesday shared an absolutely spectacular view of Earth's auroras - a captivating display of light weaving across northern or southern polar regions.

Earth's auroras, also called aurora borealis or Northern Lights and aurora australis or Southern Lights, occur when charged particles from the Sun collide with gases in Earth's atmosphere.

From the International Space Station (ISS), astronauts have a unique vantage point to observe this natural light show. At an altitude of approximately 400 kilometres (250 miles) above the Earth's surface, the space station orbits our planet every 90 minutes, providing astronauts on board with spectacular views of the auroras from a unique perspective.

Absolutely unreal. pic.twitter.com/pah5PSC0bl

— Josh Cassada (@astro_josh) February 28, 2023

Scientists study auroras to better understand space weather and predict and mitigate its effect on the Earth's technology and infrastructure.

Auroras are not just something that occur only on Earth. The stunning display of light is also visible on other planets in our solar system - Jupiter, Saturn and other worlds that have magnetic fields have auroras.

Jupiter's magnetosphere is 20,000 times stronger than Earth, therefore its auroras are huge in size and also hundreds of times more energetic than the auroras on our planet. What also makes Jovian auroras unique is they never cease.