Do you live in the north, or have you ever visited, seen the lights above, and you just had to stop and take in the breath taking view? Have you ever been to or live in the southern hemisphere and had to do the same thing? When I was little, I lived in northern Minnesota where there wasn't anything as far as big city lights and I could look up and see just about every star in the sky. I remember watching the northern lights for hours as they would wave through the sky, it was so amazing.
The Aurora Borealis ( Northern Lights ) are seen and are more frequent in the northern United States, Canada, and Alaska. They are seen the best through northern Norway, across the central Hudson Bay, through Point Barrow, Alaska, and through northern Siberia. In extreme active times, they can also be seen in the southern United States.
The Aurora Borealis is Latin meaning northern dawn, and the Aurora Australis means southern dawn.
The Northern Lights are a luminous display of different shapes or figures of color in the sky at night. The Aurora Australis ( Southern Lights ) is the same, the only difference is that they are located in the Southern Hemisphere.
During the most brilliant of nights, the colors are red, green, yellow, blue, and violet and they show themselves in the most amazing forms. They can look like hanging drapes, waves, fingers, rays, bands, arcs, and streamers.
The auroras happen between 35 miles and 600 miles ( 56km to 970km ) above the earth. They happen because of the high speed protons and electrons coming from the sun that are trapped in the Van Allen radiation belt. They are then forced towards the polar regions by the magnetic field from earth. Once these highly charged particles mix with the oxygen and nitrogen, it makes them illuminate. The auroras happen at the same times of the greatest sunspot activity and magnetic storms.
There was a lot learned during 1957-58, when the International Geophysical Year was underway. They used balloons, rockets, satellite, and radar to study. Most of the other planets in our solar system have auroras as well.
To the Cree, these phenomenal lights are known as "the Dance of the Spirits".
