What are the northern lights caused by?

What causes the Northern Lights? The Northern Lights are actually the result of collisions between gaseous particles in the Earth’s atmosphere with charged particles released from the sun’s atmosphere. Variations in colour are due to the type of gas particles that are colliding.

What is bad about the Northern Lights?

The Northern Lights occur so high up in the atmosphere that they don’t pose any threat to people watching them from the ground. The aurora itself is not harmful to humans but the electrically charged particles produced could have some potentially negative effects to infrastructure and technology.

What are the Northern Lights simple explanation?

The phenomenon. The Northern Lights, Aurora Borealis, appear in a clear night sky as swirling rivers of greenish-blue light. … The phenomenon occurs when the particles collide with atoms and molecules in the upper atmosphere (the ionosphere), transforming kinetic energy into visible light.

Do the Northern Lights happen every night?

There is no official season since the Northern Lights are almost always present, day and night. Caused by charged particles from the sun hitting atoms in Earth’s atmosphere and releasing photons, it’s a process that happens constantly.

Do northern lights make sound?

Listeners have described them as a faint rustling, clapping or popping. An observer in the 1930s said the northern lights made “a noise as if two planks had met flat ways — not a sharp break but a dull sound, loud enough for anyone to hear.”

Can you see northern lights with naked eyes?

Our naked eye can most easily see the green-yellow part of the spectrum where the sun emits most of its light. Green is the most common color observed but the Northern Lights can also appear white-gray. And a cloudy night if you’ve never seen them before, you might not even be entirely sure of what you’re looking at.

Why is aurora borealis only in the north?

Of the two poles, the aurora can be seen the strongest near the arctic circle in the Northern Hemisphere. The reason that the Aurora can only be seen at the poles has to do with how the Earth’s magnetic field acts. The Earth has a metal core and acts much like a bar magnet with two poles and a magnetic field.

Are the northern lights grey?

[The aurora or northern lights] only appear to us in shades of gray because the light is too faint to be sensed by our color-detecting cone cells. Thus the human eye views the northern lights generally in faint colors and as shades of grey/white.

How far south can the northern lights be seen?

To observers at far-northern latitudes, the Lights are a frequent occurrence, but many who live in more temperate climates have never seen them, even though they are occasionally seen as far south as 35 degrees North latitude.

Why do northern lights look green in photos?

A normal good northern lights show absolutely shows green and even purple colors. The photos do often show an exaggerated version of what was there, because they are taken with long exposure.

Are there southern lights?

Yes, there are southern lights. The aurora australis occurs around the southern magnetic pole, much as the aurora borealis (northern lights) occurs around the northern magnetic pole.

What do the Northern Lights look like in real life?

When you see them in real life, the Northern Lights aren’t actually very colorful at all. They often appear milky white in color, “almost like a cloud,” as one seasoned traveler puts it. … For that reason, auroras often appear only in shades of gray.

Is pink aurora rare?

Cameras are designed to see colors much the way our eyes do, so the aurora looks pink in pictures as well. Pink aurorae aren’t unknown, but it is rare to see the color this strongly with no almost no other coloring at all.

What is the opposite of the Northern Lights?

In the north, the phenomenon is called the aurora borealis or the northern lights. In the Southern Hemisphere, it’s the aurora australis, or southern lights.

What is the difference between the northern lights and aurora borealis?

Answer. The northern lights, one of several astronomical phenomena called polar lights (aurora polaris), are shafts or curtains of colored light visible on occasion in the night sky. … Northern lights are also called by their scientific name, aurora borealis, and southern lights are called aurora australis.

Do aurora borealis and aurora australis have the same thing?

A diffuse aurora is a featureless glow in the sky that may not be visible to the naked eye even on a dark night and defines the extent of the auroral zone (the area in which auroras are visible). … The aurora borealis’ southern counterpart, the aurora australis (or the southern lights), has almost identical features.

Are southern lights as good as northern lights?

As mentioned above, there really is no significant difference between the Northern Lights and the Southern Lights. Both are truly wonderful and are something everyone should try and see.