What causes Northern lights?

What causes Northern lights?


What causes Northern lights?

The sun sends more than heat and light to Earth. It sends energy and charged particles known as the solar wind. Sometimes, that solar wind becomes a storm.

The sun’s outer atmosphere occasionally “burps” out huge bursts of energy called coronal mass ejections. They produce solar storms, also known as geomagnetic storms.

The Earth’s magnetic field shields us from much of it, but particles can travel down the magnetic field lines along the north and south poles and into Earth’s atmosphere.

When the particles interact with the gases in our atmosphere, they can produce light, like blue and purple from nitrogen, green and red from oxygen.

This storm generated a particularly vibrant display when it hit because the orientation of the storm’s magnetism lined up well with the Earth’s.



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