Hunting The Northern Lights
Keep me where the Northern Lights are
Yeah, I’m going to tell you about that weird colorful lights dancing in the night sky. Northern lights are also known by their scientific name Aurora Borealis.
A bit of science
Polar lights (Aurora Polaris) are an atmospheric phenomenon found in both the northern and southern hemispheres. In fact, they are caused by electrically charged particles from space slamming at the Earth’s upper atmosphere at a very high speed but our planet’s magnetic field protects us from the onslaught. These particles originate from the sun, and when they reach Earth’s upper atmosphere Earth’s magnetic field redirects the particles toward the poles. When these charged particles hit the atoms and molecules high up in the atmosphere, they become excited. The glowing lights that we see, are formulated when these charged particles collide with the atoms and molecules in the atmosphere.
Why we see different colors?
The most common color in the Northern lights is green, however, sometimes it is possible to see red, pink, white, and quite rarely violet. The reason we see different colors is because the Earth’s atmosphere consists of different atoms, such as oxygen and nitrogen. These atoms are energized at a different level of…
