Aurora Borealis
Aurora Borealis - 3 at Fairbanks - Sep. 29, 2006
"The name
The northern lights have had a number of names through history. The
scientific name for the phenomena is Aurora Borealis, which is Latin
and translates into the red dawn of the north. It was the Italian
scientist Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) who first used the expression.
On the latitude where Galileo was living, northern lights consist of
mainly red colour.
What causes them?
Northern lights originate from our sun. During large explosions and
flares, huge quantities of solar particles are thrown out of the sun
and into deep space. These plasma clouds travel through space with
speeds varying from 300 to 1000 kilometers per second.
But even with such speeds (over a million kilometer per hour), it takes these plasma clouds two to three days to reach our planet. When they are closing in on Earth, they are captured by Earth's magnetic field (the magnetosphere) and guided towards Earth's two magnetic poles; the geomagnetic south pole and the geomagnetic north pole.
On their way down towards the geomagnetic poles, the solar particles are stopped by Earth's atmosphere, which acts as an effective shield against these deadly particles.
When the solar particles are stopped by the atmosphere, they collide with the atmospheric gases present, and the collision energy between the solar particle and the gas molecule is emitted as a photon - a light particle. And when you have many such collisions, you have an aurora - lights that may seem to move across the sky.
- quoted from www.northern-lights.no";
Comments and faves
yerko, Tony Hirtenstein, HelpFeedAlex, Lilandra, and 25 other people added this photo to their favorites.
Brezzia (67 months ago | reply)
awsome photos, these northern lights look so unreal, really cool.
billy sarsam (42 months ago | reply)
this is unbelievable!
I invite you to join our group with your green pics and I would love to have this picture added to
simply green
thanks
billy
agkamerer (37 months ago | reply)
Thanks for making this CC. I used your photo here: www.squidoo.com/gabrielgadflygoals
The_Circumference (35 months ago | reply)
Hello!
Just wanted to let you know that your photo has been featured in a travel article on The Circumference with a link back.
You can view the article here:
www.thecircumference.org/experiences/aurora-b orealis
Thanks for sharing your fantastic photo!
- The Circumference