The Northern Lights Teacher: Aurora

The Northern Lights or Aurora Borealis

The Northern Lights or Aurora Borealis is an incredible light show visible on occasion in the night sky. The Aurora Borealis are shafts or curtains of colored light visible around the magnetic poles of the northern and southern hemispheres. They are caused by collisions between electrically charged particles released from the sun that enter the earth’s atmosphere and collide with gases such as oxygen and nitrogen.

The Northern Lights are especially related to the polar regions. They occur most frequently in a belt of radius 2500 km centered on the magnetic north pole. This so-called auroral zone extends over northern Scandinavia, Iceland, the southern tip of Greenland and continuing over northern Canada, Alaska and along the northern coast of Siberia.

The Aurora Borealis. (Aurora-Service)

The Northern Lights. (The Northern Lights Centre)

The northern lights-what are they?. (The Arctic University of Norway)

The Northern Lights - where, when and what. (The Arctic University of Norway)

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