aurora the northern lights 111209

Aurora – The Northern Lights Auroras, also know n as the northern and southern (polar) l ights or aurorae ( singular: aurora), are natural light displays in the sky, usually observed at night, particularly in the Polar Regions. As such, they are also referred to as polar auroras. They usually occur in the ionosphere. In the northern polar, it’s known as the aurora borealis. The first part of the name – Aurora – is named after the Roman goddess of dawn, and the second part of the name – Borealis – is a Greek name for the north wind. It was so named Aurora Borealis by Pierre Gassendi in 1621. It’s also called the northern polar lights because it is visible in the sky from the Northern Hemisphere. You have an increased chance of visibility the closer you are to the North Magnetic Pole, which is found in the arctic islands of northern Canada. The closer you are to the magnetic pole, the higher above your head the Auroras will seem to be. But, from further away, the Aurora will shine a greenish glow or at times a somewhat reddish color, across the northern horizon. The aurora borealis often appears near the equinoxes; between September to October and between March to April. Even though the Auroras can be spotted throughout the world, it is mainly visible the closer you are to the poles because of the longer periods of darkness and the magnetic field. The aurora australis (which is Latin for ‘ from the south’), which is found in the southern pole region, has almost the same properties as the aurora borealis, except that its only visible from the southern region of Antarctica. But they can also be seen in Australia and South America. What causes the northern lights? The Aurora is formed by the ionized collision of solar wind p articles which are pouring through and accelerating along the Earth’s magnetic field. The rest of the energy that was worked up is lost by the release of the photon light, or when it collides with another atom or colliding with another molecule. The breakdown can be seen as such: 1- with the release of oxygen: Green or brownish-red, depending on the amount of energy absorbed. 2 – with the release of nitrogen: Blue or red. Blue if the atom recovers an electron after it has been ionized. Red if returning to its lowest allowed energy state from a worked up state. Oxygen is a little unusual in terms of its lowest allowed energy state (Return to ground state) , it can take less than a second to emit green light, and up to two minutes to emit red. Collisions with other atoms or molecules will absorb the worked up energy and prevent them from being release. At the very top of the atmosphere, you will fi nd a higher percentage of oxygen, and you wil l also find that it is so thin that collisions rarely allow enough time for oxygen to emit red. Collisions start to happen more often when traveling down into the atmosphere, so that the red emissions do not have enough time to occur, which eventually means that even green light emissions are prevented.

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This is why there is a difference in colors, according to the altitude. At a higher altitude, oxygen red dominates then oxygen green and nitrogen blue/red, then finallynitrogen blue/red when collisions stop oxygen from emitting anything.

So, in short:When electrically charged particles from the Sun collide with the Earth's upper atmosphere, theycause the atmospheric atoms and ions to radiate different colors and bands of light.

How are the colors of the Aurora formed?

The colors of the Aurora depend on the gases in the Earth’s Atmosphere and the solar particlesthat are colliding with the different gases at the various heights.

• At a very high altitude, oxygen is the most common gas, and collisions there can create a rarered aurora.

• At lower altitudes, collision with oxygen here makes a yellow-to-green light that is commonlyseen.

• At about 60 miles up, the nitrogen molecules creates a red light that often seems to form thelower fringes of what can be called the auroral curtains.

• There are lighter gases high in the atmosphere, like hydrogen and helium, which makes the blueand purple colors, but we can’t always really see them in the night sky.

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