The aurora borealis (northern lights) and aurora australis (southern lights) are some of the most beautiful natural phenomena on Earth. The cause is far away: storms on the Sun. The Sun constantly streams out charged particles - protons and electrons - in something called the solar wind. Most of this stream misses Earth or gets deflected harmlessly. But during particularly active solar periods, huge bursts of these particles slam into Earth’s magnetic field.
The magnetic field funnels the particles toward the poles, where they crash into atoms in our upper atmosphere - mostly oxygen and nitrogen. When the charged particles hit these atoms, they energize them, and the atoms release that energy as light. Oxygen glows green or red. Nitrogen glows blue or purple. The result is wavy curtains of color across the night sky, from 60 to 250 miles high.
Auroras are best seen at high latitudes - Iceland, Alaska, northern Canada, Norway, Russia. During strong solar storms, they can be visible much further south, even occasionally in places like New York or France. The lights typically move and shift slowly, like ghostly drapery, but during particularly active displays they can ripple and dance dramatically across the entire sky.
