What are the Northern Lights?

The Northern Lights are amazing colours lighting up and moving around in the night sky that can be seen around the North Pole. They can also be regularly seen around other northern parts of the world, including Scotland. The proper name for the Northern Lights is Aurora Borealis. There is also Southern Lights near the South Pole, called Aurora Australis.

The Northern Lights are caused by solar storms on the Sun’s surface! They are geomagnetic storms and the solar winds from these storms on the Sun can reach the Earth’s atmosphere. The Earths magnetic field protects us from most of the effects from the Solar winds.

The Earth’s magnetic field then forces this solar wind to the North and South Pole. The charged particles in the Suns solar wind then move downwards through the Earths atmosphere. These particles then crash into gas atoms that are in the Earth’s atmosphere. These are gases such as oxygen and nitrogen. When they crash together the atoms give off a light called an aurora.

The most common colour to be seen in the Northern Lights is green. The green colour is created when the particles from the solar wind crash into oxygen molecules. Red auroras are also created by oxygen molecules but are less common and are created higher up in the atmosphere.

Blue and purple auroras are less common and usually appear during a big solar storm. These colours are created when the suns particles crash into nitrogen.

Sometimes pinks and yellows will be seen, again when there is a big solar storm. These are created by a mix of green or blue and red auroras.