• Question: What are the northern lights...?

    Asked by anon-208899 to Tori, Titus, Stuart, Hannah, Gill, Alessandro on 8 Mar 2019.
    • Photo: Stuart Higgins

      Stuart Higgins answered on 8 Mar 2019:

      As well as giving out light, the sun also gives out lots of electrons, protons and other particles that have an electrical charge. Astrophysicists call this the solar wind. When the solar wind hits the earth, it gets pulled about by the earth’s magnetic field. If the particles end up bashing into gas atoms in the atmosphere it causes them to give out light.

    • Photo: Gill Harrison

      Gill Harrison answered on 8 Mar 2019:

      Amazing…
      https://www.northernlightscentre.ca/northernlights.html

    • Photo: Hannah Dalgleish

      Hannah Dalgleish answered on 9 Mar 2019:

      Here’s an infographic to help visualise the process. Extremely energetic particles are given off by the Sun and interact with the Earth’s magnetic field. The other really cool thing is that the northern lights also happen on other planets like Jupiter and Saturn (google some images if you can, it’s very awesome)!

    • Photo: Tori Blakeman

      Tori Blakeman answered on 12 Mar 2019:

      Loving the answer from Hannah! I think I’m going to use that diagram in the future 🙂 All I can add to the explanation is that you can see them in Northern Scotland! So you don’t have to go that far to see them. It is my dream to see the Northern Lights!! Such a beautiful wonder of nature.

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