Aurora: Northern and Southern Lights

Since high school, Aurora has been my favorite subjects. There was this one presentation that we are compulsory to do and I chose Aurora as my topic.

Although aurora is not available to be seen at my country, Malaysia, but I have this big ambition of wanting to visit the countries where the aurora can be seen.

Basically there are two types of aurora;

1. Aurora borealis
2. Aurora australis

Both of this aurora can be seen at high latitude region like Arctic and Antarctic region.

image source :aurora1

There are more about these beautiful colors dancing on the night sky. In Norse mythology, the aurora is believed to be the fire bridges to the sky built by the gods. And in some Inuit believe that the spirit of their ancestral could be seen dancing in the flickering light.

In Latin words, aurora means "sunrise' or "goddess of dawn". It is a light that could be seen on the sky caused be the reactions of charged particles such as electrons and protons. These particles enter the atmosphere from the outer space and caused ionisation and excitation of atmospheric constituents and optical emissions.

The electrons and photons came from the sun which is sent by the great storms that occurs on the sun's surface. The charged particles are hurdled to all directions and some of the charged particles came into contact with Earth's magnetic fields.

These charged particles then carried by the Earth's magnetic fields to the high latitudes' places such as the poles. When these particles enter the Earth's atmosphere, it hits the atoms and molecules in the Earth's atmosphere and those atoms lighted up.