• Question: what are the northern lights?

    Asked by issy13 to Amy, Sarah, Will on 21 Jun 2012.
    • Photo: Will Reynolds

      Will Reynolds answered on 21 Jun 2012:

      The northern lights are caused by highly energetic charged particles from the sun, colliding with our atmosphere. This happens at the north pole (aurora borealis), visible from the arctic and scandinavia and south pole (aurora australis), visible from antarctica, south africa and australia, because these are the ends of the earths magnetic field where the charged particles are attracted to. When they collide with the atmosphere they release energy in the form of light, which is why we see lots of different colours! Hope this helps!

    • Photo: Sarah Martin

      Sarah Martin answered on 22 Jun 2012:

      Hi issy!

      Every so often, there is a massive erruption on the surface of the sun, and it throws out lots of charged particles (electrons, protons etc) called solar wind. Most of Earth is shielded from them by its magnetic field, which only allows the particles to enter the atmosphere in the far North and South of the planet!

      Here’s a diagram that shows how this happens:

      When the particles hit oxygen and nitrogen atoms, they light them up – a bit like neon in light rods – and the sky lights up where the particles are showering!

      I saw Northern Lights when I was a student in St Andrews in Scotland, it was spectacular! Here are the photos another student, Thomas, took of it!
      http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/physics/news/Panda_news/aurora_20_11_03.htm

      Have you seen them?

      🙂 Sarah

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