What is an auroral display?

What is an auroral display?

An aurora is a natural light display that shimmers in the sky. Colorful blue, red, yellow, green, and orange lights shift gently and change shape like softly blowing curtains. Auroras are only visible at night, and usually only appear in lower polar regions.

What causes auroral displays?

The lights we see in the night sky are in actual fact caused by activity on the surface of the Sun. Solar storms on our star’s surface give out huge clouds of electrically charged particles. These particles can travel millions of miles, and some may eventually collide with the Earth.

What is the auroral zone?

Most auroras occur in a band known as the “auroral zone”, which is typically 3° to 6° wide in latitude and between 10° and 20° from the geomagnetic poles at all local times (or longitudes), most clearly seen at night against a dark sky.

What colors can an auroral display be?

Most of the auroral features are greenish-yellow, but sometimes the tall rays will turn red at their tops and along their lower edges. On rare occasions, sunlight will hit the top part of the auroral rays to create a faint blue color.

Can you see aurora from a plane?

Seeing the Northern Lights from a plane Seeing the Northern Lights from thousands of feet in the air is a unique experience because the lights appear brighter from the sky than from the ground. It is also easier to see the subtle dancing movements that the lights make.

Can you see northern lights with naked eyes?

You will never see an aurora with the naked eye that looks like the photographs taken on the same night. Cameras, using long exposures, are much more sensitive than the human eye. They capture colours and details that are impossible for the human eye to detect.

Where can I see northern lights in 2020?

The best places in the world are usually closer to the Arctic Circle, including Alaska, Canada, Iceland, Greenland, Norway, Sweden and Finland. But don’t limit yourself: You can also spot the southern lights in the southern hemisphere. Still, the northern lights are the star of the show.

Where is the auroral zone located?

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, Island, the southern tip of Greenland and continuing over northern Canada, Alaska and along the northern coast of Siberia.

What month is best for aurora borealis?

Thanks to longer hours of darkness and clear night skies, December through March is usually the best time to observe this elusive natural phenomenon (though you can sometimes see the northern lights starting as early as August).

What is the rarest color for the Northern Lights?

It’s extremely rare to have an aurora without green. Green is the color people usually have in mind when they think of aurora. Above ~250km of altitude, the entities are extremely isolated and scares. The general density of the atmosphere is so low that particles rarely bump into each other anymore.

What is the rarest northern light colour?

The most common auroral color, a pale yellowish-green, is produced by oxygen molecules located about 60 miles above the earth. Rare, all-red auroras are produced by high-altitude oxygen, at heights of up to 200 miles.