The European Space Agency (ESA) has shared images from its Smile satellite mission that look strikingly similar to the Death Star from the Star Wars universe. These images were captured by the UVI camera, an ultraviolet telescope that records light with wavelengths between 160 and 180 nanometers. Unlike traditional cameras that capture visible light, the UVI does not show clouds or continents. Instead, it reveals the aurora borealis, the shimmering lights seen in the Arctic region. The images were taken on July 24, just two weeks after the UVI instrument was activated. Auroras are caused when charged particles from the sun, carried by the solar wind, interact with Earth's magnetic field and collide with molecules in the upper atmosphere, creating light. The video shows a sub-auroral storm, a disturbance in Earth's magnetic field caused by a sudden increase in solar wind particles. The Smile mission aims to study solar storms and how they affect Earth's magnetosphere, the region of space around the planet influenced by its magnetic field. These solar storms can interfere with satellites and ground-based infrastructure such as power grids and radio communications, even though Earth's magnetic field generally shields the planet. The ESA highlights that the UVI instrument can now record auroras for 45 consecutive hours, a significant improvement over previous spacecraft, which could only observe them for about 15 hours at a time. Another instrument on the Smile satellite, the SXI, is a "soft" X-ray telescope and the main European contribution to the mission. SXI is designed to observe the boundary of Earth's magnetic field by capturing the glow emitted when solar wind particles interact with the upper atmosphere. SXI's initial test images have revealed remnants of stars that exploded as supernovae, including one in the Large Magellanic Cloud and another, Cassiopeia A, in the Milky Way. However, when pointed toward Earth, the instrument currently captures too much stray light, which interferes with the quality of the images. European and Chinese teams are working to adjust settings and install software updates to reduce this light interference. The ESA expects the issue of stray light to decrease as the Smile satellite points further away from Earth and as the North Pole emits less light during winter. The agency anticipates that by mid-October, SXI will be able to take its first usable image of the magnetopause or the north polar lobe, key regions of Earth's magnetic field that are crucial for understanding how solar storms interact with our planet.