The reason behind the appearance of Aurora

Unravelling the phenomenon of those artistic natural lights : AURORA

 

Aurora, an amazingly beautiful graphical paint on nature’s sky have reasonably inspired tons of myths and saga over the years. 

Like, the Vikings worshiped Odin as the main god and regent of Asgard. They believed that he was preparing for Ragnarök the end of the gods and beginning of a new world.

According to legends, Ragnarök was destined to become Odin’s biggest battle. Female mounted warriors, the Valkyries armed with armour and spears, had the task to escorting the warriors from earth to Odin. 

The northern lights that illuminated the sky were believed to be the after scene of the Vikings, the reflections of the armour of these warriors. But, these all are wrong.

 

An aurora is the utterly spectacular and dazzling natural scientific phenomenon, display in the Earth’s sky, mostly seen in the high latitude regions. Aurora is a beautiful stuff mother earth is capable of.

The northern and southern lights, also called as the ‘Aurora Borealis’ and ‘Aurora Australis’ respectively; occur when the high energy particle from the sun collide with the atoms in Earth’s atmosphere.

What makes this happen:

 

‘Aurora Borealis’ is a Latin word mean Dawn of the North pole given by the famous astronomer and scientist Galileo Galilei. But, it was 1896, a Norwegian scientist Kristian Birkeland figured out the causes of the northern light.

As we know, some hot molten irons are rolling around the centre of Earth under huge gravitational pressure which creates magnetic field from the centre of Earth through the crust into the space around the planet. Due to which, our planet possess magnetosphere.

The sun provide us lots of energy and small particle along with heat and light. When these particles encounter our magnetosphere, most of them bounce off. But some of them manage to get through at the places near the polar region. 

The deflection by the magnetic field will deflect the electrons moving around the Earth and hits near the polar region. There the particles interact with the gases in our atmosphere which produces a spectacle of light that mankind has amazed at for centuries.

Video source- YouTube | Video by- National Geographic

What causes the colours?

 

A collision of oxygen atoms and charged particles decided the colours. When charged particles enter the Earth’s upper atmosphere, they come into contact with the gases there, particularly oxygen, hydrogen and nitrogen. As they strike the atoms of these gaseous elements they excite them and as they calm down they release light.

 The green colour of the aurora comes from colliding the charged particle with oxygen atoms; the red from both oxygen and nitrogen and the purple, pink, blues from nitrogen.

The best places to see the aurora:

 

These beautiful artistic lights can be seen usually closer to the Arctic Circle including Alaska, northern Canada, Iceland ,Greenland, Norway, Sweden and Finland. 

During periods of particularly active solar flares, the light can also be seen at the top of Scotland and Northern England.

Also you can spot the southern lights in the southern hemisphere such as Tasmania, New Zealand and Antarctica.

Also read| Astronomical Events in August 2020