Northern Lights

Executive summary by darmansjah

The aurora borealis forms a 2,000 mile wide (3,219 km) oval over the North Pole.

ARTIC CIRCLE The northern lights, or aurora borealis, forms in the rolling interior of the sun. the atoms that make up solar gases are transformed into a thin stream of electrically charged particles-protons and electrons. This stream, the solar wind, is both matter ad energy. It continuously erupts from the sun. most of the solar wind sideswipes the Earth’s magnetic shield, but some spirals down toward the planet’s north and south magnetic poles, where it churns the oxygen and nitrogen in the atmosphere. Shades of green, red, bright pink, blue, or violet appear depending on how far from Earth the electrons and nitrogen molecules interact.

An Audience of One

Residents of Alsaka, such as this woman in Anchorage, know that the best time to view the northern lights is during long midwinter nights, when the sun is at “solar maximum”-the period of greatest activity in the solar cycle.