{"id":664,"date":"2024-05-17T19:59:35","date_gmt":"2024-05-17T19:59:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/home-ed-in-a-shed.blog\/?p=664"},"modified":"2024-05-17T19:59:39","modified_gmt":"2024-05-17T19:59:39","slug":"aurora-borialis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/home-ed-in-a-shed.blog\/?p=664","title":{"rendered":"Aurora Borialis"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Hey Blog! I\u2019m so sorry it\u2019s been so long since I was doing weekly posts, life has got in the way and I wasn\u2019t up to speed. I hope that even with my Environmental Management IGCSE Paper 1 Exam next week and Paper 2 Exam two weeks after, I will remain on top of my workload and continue posting. However, this post is about a natural phenomenon I saw last week for the first time \u2013 it\u2019s the Northern Lights, the Aurora Borialis!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Northern Lights are not to be confused with The Northern Lights<\/em> by Philip Pulman, which I reviewed last year. The book says they are where the world is thin, made so by the solar wind, so you can see parallel universes. The scientists never mention the ability to see these other worlds, and though I looked, I couldn\u2019t see any. Ah well. Still, they are amazing, with brightly coloured green, purple, and occasionally reddish, yellowish, and blueish lights covering the sky. They can be seen from space, from Earth, and they even occur on other planets. But why are they here in the first place?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Apparently, they aren\u2019t light shining off the armour of the Valkyrie warriors coming to pick up Viking dead; spirits being taken to heaven; people engaged in a battle in the sky; a premonition of the French Monarchy being overthrown; foxes brushing mountains with their tales; or the fires of a deity; but instead a storm of solar wind. It occurs when a discharge of plasma through the Sun\u2019s coronal holes draws some of the Sun\u2019s magnetic field with it; this portion of solar wind (the continual plasma ejection which shines out of the Sun) amplified by the magnetic field around it then collides with our own magnetic field, Earth\u2019s magnetosphere, the shield around Earth which protects us from solar radiation. The particles of plasma are deflected away from Earth, which makes the magnetosphere into a teardrop-like shape, but there is one small hole where solar particles can enter \u2013 a point where the magnetic field doesn\u2019t ring around the Earth but flies outwards (look at a diagram of the force lines on a magnet), too far away to shield us \u2013 the poles! Particles are channelled down through the sky towards our poles, not poles in the ground like Pooh though, but rather magnetic poles. As the energy-rich particles hit our atmosphere, they \u2018excite\u2019 oxygen and nitrogen in the air; the electrons of these gases go into a higher orbit (a \u2018hiccup\u2019 one of my science teachers called it!) and as they come back down, they release the excess energy as light.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The light is coloured according to the gas, oxygen being most commonly green, and nitrogen being most commonly purple. The other colours are less common, but do occasionally show. A strong solar storm like the one just passed, which showed lights far south, only happens about once every 22 years, when the sun\u2019s magnetic field ejects a large storm of charged particles \u2013 so watch out in 22 years for another showing of the northern lights!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All you need to make an aurora are:<\/p>\n\n\n\n