The northern lights, whole at last: a spacecraft sees the full ring

On September 30, the European Space Agency released the first science images from SMILE — a joint European–Chinese spacecraft — and they are staggering: the complete ring of the northern lights circling the North Pole in ultraviolet light, the first full-ring view from space since 2008. The ultraviolet camera can watch the aurora for 45 hours straight, triple the old record, so scientists can follow entire geomagnetic storms from the first squeeze of Earth's magnetic field to the last fading arc. Solar activity is still running hot, which means the data arriving now comes at the perfect moment.