Nature’s sky art

This phenomenon happens mostly about radius 2500km centered on the magnetic north pole. It produces nearly 900 billion watts of energy mostly in heat.

It all starts with solar winds. When electrons from solar winds from the sun enter the thin upper layer of the Earth’s atmosphere, they collide with oxygen and nitrogen molecules and then move to a higher energy state. Later they go back to a lower state of energy. This produces what we see and call Aurora borealis. Or you just say they are as a result of explosive pulses in the atmosphere from solar winds.

Really the name aurora borealis was given it’s name by Galileo Galilei in 1619. It was named after the Roman goddess of dawn, Aurora, and the Greek god of north wind, Boreas. He had the misconception that what he saw was due to sunlight reflecting from the atmosphere.

At the start of this article, it was stated that this phenomenon happens mostly about radius 2500km centered on the magnetic north pole. Well this happens abundantly in countries like Sweden, Alaska, Scotland, Russia and Norway. These beautiful blue,red, yellow,green lights move like waves in the sky. It happens anywhere from 10 minutes to midnight depending on the magnitude of the solar wind.

Well no. It happens in other planets. The planets that experience aurora have active magnetic fields. The planets known to experience aurora are the gas giants: Jupiter,Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.