On Earth, auroras are a phenomenon of lights in the skies that occur when solar winds hit the planet's magnetic field.
Mars, on the other hand, has no global magnetic fields so scientists were surprised in 2016 when NASA's MAVEN spacecraft discovered that Mars, too, has auroras. Unlike terrestrial auroras, Martian ones are proton auroras and emit ultraviolet light.
Today, Mars Hope Probe's EMUS (Emirate Mars Ultraviolet Spectrometer) captured new images of another, weird type of auroras on the red planet's atmosphere called discrete auroras.
From The Next Web:
The pictures fully characterize the discrete aurora phenomenon in Mars’ atmosphere for the first time in history. Scientists believe they could challenge the notion that large scale solar events are needed to drive Mars auroral events.
“The implications for our understanding of Mars’ atmospheric and magnetospheric science are tremendous and provide new support to the theory that solar storms are not necessary to drive Mars‘ aurora,” said Hessa Al Matroushi, the Emirates Mars Mission’s science lead.