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Rita Nogherotto

Imaggeo on Mondays: Dust devil sighting in the Atacama Desert

Imaggeo on Mondays: Dust devil sighting in the Atacama Desert

Dust devils are like miniature tornadoes, they form when a pocket of hot air near the surface moves fast upward and meets cooler air above it. As the air rapidly rises, the column of hot air is stretched vertically, thereby moving mass closer to the axis of rotation, which causes intensification of the spinning effect by conservation of angular momentum. In the Atacama Desert [in Chile] they are r ...[Read More]

Imaggeo on Mondays: Northern lights in northern Norway

Imaggeo on Mondays: Northern lights in northern Norway

Northern lights in Tromsø, displaying the collisions between electrically charged particles from the sun which penetrate the earth’s magnetic shield and strike atoms and molecules in our atmosphere. Collisions excite the atoms causing electrons to move to higher-energy orbits, further away from the nucleus. When electrons move back to lower-energy orbits, they release particles of light call ...[Read More]