For many years people have wondered just what the Northern Lights were.

People believe that they are elementary particle physics, superstition,

mythology and fairy tales. The Northern Lights or Auroras, are natures light
shows. They have filled people with wondered and have inspired artists, and
they have also frightened people to think that the end is near. More exact
explanations of these phenomenon could not be given until modern particle
physics were developed, and knowledge about the Earths magnetosphere
has been based on measurements from satellites.
The Sun throws out particles, from its surface, far out into space.
These particles are called Solar Winds, and cause the Northern
lights.
What was once hydrogen becomes a gas of free electrons and
protons called plasma. This plasma escapes from the Suns
atmosphere through a hole in the Suns magnetic field. As they
escape, they are thrown out by the rotation of the sun in a
continuous spiral. This is called the garden-hose effect. The names
comes from the pattern of water droplets that form if we were to
swing a hose around and around, above our heads.
After about two to five days traveling through space, the plasma (solar
winds) reaches the earths magnetic field, forcing it on the day light side of
the earth, and stretches into a tail on the night side. A few particles
penetrate down to earth along the lines of the magnetic field and enter the
tail which stretches out into a long cylinder. It is as if the earths magnetic
field created a tunnel in the plasma current from the solar winds.
The magnetic tail is divided into two by a sheet of plasma. The
magnetic field lines from the earths north and South Pole stretch out in their
halves, so that the fields are in opposition. The electrons and protons in each
half of the plasma rotate in the opposite direction forming a huge dynamo
with the positive pole on the side of the plasma sheet facing dawn and the
negative pole facing evening. The current of charged particles drives the
dynamo between the two poles.
When the northern lights break out, this is what happens. The solar winds
strengthen and the magnetic tail becomes unstable. Charged particles move
inward towards the center of the tail and cause it to increase in length and to
taper. The particles draw the magnetic field lines toward the center where
they meet causing a magnetic short-circuit about fifteen times the earths
radius above the earth on the night side. This happens at the dynamos
outer circuit.
Most of the northern lights we see form in electrons and move into the
ionosphere. The mechanism by which their kinetic energy is converted to
visible light is called the quantum leap. To explain this mechanism, imagine
a hydrogen atom consisting of a single positive proton nucleus around which
spins a single electron at a set distances. Normally, the electron is in an orbit
as close to the proton as possible. In a state like this, the hydrogen atom a
minimum energy. There are other possible orbits further away from the
nucleus in which the electron can spin. When a free electron collides with a
hydrogen electron at a high speed, it releases energy. Because of this, the
spinning electron moves into another, higher energy orbit further out from
the nucleus. It now contains more potential energy, but is unstable and
unable to keep this energy. It returns to its original orbit, releasing the extra
energy as a photon of light. Billions of these quantum leaps that keep
occurring create the Northern lights.
The particles that come down from the magnetic tail reach
the earth in a belt called the northern lights oval. This belt
is wider on the night side of the earth than on the day side
and is centered on the magnetic pole, while the earth
revolves around the geographic poles. The width of the belt
on the night side is up to 600 km.
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In the old days, the weather forecast was sometimes based on the northern lights.
However, they were often inconsistent. In Labrador, colored lights meant good weather
opposed to in Greenland they were a sign of storms. Even in the last century, you could
read in an encyclopedia that the northern lights and thundery weather were the result of
the same phenomenon, but with different forms of electrical discharge. In North Norway,
the northern lights were often associated with cold weather.
Between 1645 and 1715, there was not a lot of sunspot activity and
therefore little northern lights activity. This period is called the
Maunder minimum, after the leader of the Greenwich Observatory
in England who was the first to document this low activity. The
northern lights oval was then in a position that the northern lights
should have been visible, but the sun was less active and the
northern lights failed to appear. During periods like this, the
climate on earth generally tends to be colder and the Maunder
minimum corresponds with what is now known with as the
Scandinavian little iceage. Since then, sunspot activity has
increased and reached a maximum in 1991. This was the largest
maximum in 300 years with more solar energy release, greater
sunspot activity and more northern lights.
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September and March are the most frequent months for auroras and January
and July the least likely. Most of the solar activity comes from regions of the
sun outside the solar equatorial band +/- 10 degrees to either side of the solar
equator. The Earth in its orbit is inside this equatorial band during January
and July, and when it is at its maximum in September and March, the Earth
is in the zone of solar activity
The gases in the Earths atmosphere determine the auroral lights colors. In
the ionosphere, where the collisions are taking place, incoming solar
particles collide with oxygen and nitrogen gases. Oxygen atoms give off
green and red light. Nitrogen atoms give off red light. Some blue and violet
light is also given off, but it is difficult for our eyes to see it.
No two auroras are alike. Auroras start off low on the horizon, then a faint
glow of light appears. Slowly, an arch of light lazily stretches across the sky.
Bands of light layer on top of each other reaching higher into the sky. The
lights begin to blend together. The layers seem to drip into each other as
waves move slowly across the sky. The lights form a giant curtain in the sky
that slowly waves as if a gentle breeze were blowing. At the bottom of the
curtain, waves ripple across the sky curling and bending in the imaginary
wind.
EARTH'S AURORAS MAKE RARE JOINT APPEARANCE
Scientists using NASA's Polar spacecraft
have captured the first-ever movie of
auroras dancing simultaneously around
both of Earth's polar regions. During a
space weather storm on October 22,
Polar's Visible Imaging System observed
the aurora borealis and aurora australis
(northern and southern lights) expanding
and brightening in parallel at opposite ends
of the world. The images confirm the three-
century old theory that auroras in the
northern and southern hemispheres are
nearly mirror images -- conjugates - of each
other.
"This is the first time that we have seen
both auroral ovals simultaneously with such
clarity," says Dr. Nicola Fox, the science
operations manager for the Polar
spacecraft, based at NASA Goddard Space
Flight Center. "With these images, we have
the ability to see the dynamics of conjugate
auroras."