Watch stunning video of 'ghostly curtain of light': Nasa releases footage of Saturn's aurora

Nasa just uploaded a video that shows Saturn's southern auroras or southern lights. Cassini is in its final mission, taking photographs and shooting video closer to the surface of Saturn than any other spacecraft has ever achieved.

Saturn experiences the northern and southern lights similar to the way Earth does, but there is not much footage of it happening this close to Saturn's surface.

The video uploaded to Cassini's official Twitter page shows specks of light dancing across the outer atmosphere of the planet. Nasa reports that, "The auroras rotate from left to right, curving around the planet as Saturn rotates over about 70 minutes, compressed here into a movie sequence of about five seconds."

A video of the event was also uploaded to the Nasa Jet Propulsion Laboratory's YouTube channel that calls the auroras a "ghostly curtain of light". There is a side-by-side comparison of the footage from afar that was captured in 2008 and the most recent ones in the midst of the aurora.

Nasa has mentioned that Cassini will fall into Saturn in a controlled dive on 15 September, 2017; there is a live countdown clock keeping track on its website.

The spacecraft has been designed, according to Nasa, in such a way that it keeps transmitting data till it burns upon entry into Saturn's atmosphere like a meteor. Cassini has spent 13 years in orbit around Saturn.

The video, as explained by Nasa, is of the auroras around Saturn's south pole and shows Cassini moving around the gas giant during this observation, keeping its gaze fixed on a particular spot.

Auroras are caused by collisions between gases in the upper atmosphere and charged particles emitted by the Sun. According to Nasa, if a planet has a magnetic field and an atmosphere, they can experience auroras. They have been documented on Earth, Jupiter, Saturn, and rarely on Venus and Mars.