Aurora: Dancing lights
Its Sunday morning and im just having coffee while watching outside from my window. I can see some glittering lights on road which is refraction images creating by kids playing outside with glass toys. And i come up with ideas to search about proper details regarding aurora lights, the light show by nature in Antarctica zones.
Some day ago i have watched series on television , i think on BBC earth some show which talks about some magnetic field behind that lights at pole of earth. Even that particular time , i get amazed by that information, but last some days i wont get that much time to search for properly. But now as its Sunday , and specially kids activity remind me to clear my all question.
Antarctica and it is a top of the world, literally. The vast expanse of ice, the chilling and biting cold, and the prolonged night that spills into days and then into months, gives a surreal feeling of being in a place that is ‘out of this world’. The dancing lights further add to this mystique. The ‘painted curtains’ furling in the jaded polar nights add a dash of aura that surreptitiously brings one close to divinity.
Aurorais a natural display of different colored lights that brighten up the polar skies. Aurorae are mostly confined to Polar Regions. The northern (Arctic) aurora is called ‘Aurora Borealis’ or ‘’northern lights’’. The southern or Antarctic is called ‘Aurora Australis’ or ‘dawn of the south’. These lights are usually seen above the magnetic poles of the northern and southern hemisphere.
Aurora displays can be seen in many colors, although pale green and pink are the most common. Shades of red, yellow, green, blue, and violet are sparsely seen. The lights appear in many forms like patches or scattered clouds of light, streamers, arcs, rippling curtains or shooting rays that light up the sky with a strange glow.
Auroras are generated when the Earth's magnetosphere is adequately disturbed by the solar wind. The solar wind is a stream of charged particles released from the upper atmosphere of the Sun. In normal circumstances, the Earth’s magnetic field blocks most of the solar wind. But when there is high solar activity, the relatively weak magnetosphere in the Polar Regions is not able to ward off the strengthened solar wind. At high-latitude areas, especially the Polar Regions, the magnetic field is vertical, which can provide easy access for these particles to enter Earth’s atmosphere to interact with various constituents present in the atmosphere. During this interaction there is transfer of energy from the solar wind to the atmosphere, which heatsup, and is excited. The excess energy is released to the atmosphere which is seen in the form of moving or dancing lights.
The auroras are thus an outcome of collision between electrically charged particles from the sun that enter the Earth's atmosphere and the gaseous particles in the Earth’s atmosphere. The type of gaseous particles present in the Earth’s atmosphere determine the color of the aurora.
The auroras can only be seen at night because their light is not as strong as the day light. It can be seen from long distances, as they stretch in the sky for hundreds of kilometers. The phenomenon of aurora display has also been observed on other planets that have a magnetic field, such as Jupiter, Saturn and Mars.
During that time when I was watching that specific show dedicated to Antarctica , and to the aurora light . I couldn't turned of my eyes from that beautiful moment .Because those lights are just like you are watching a light show in outdoor. The comparison is not so good, i know , but what i can do because more than lantern festival i never watched anything good like this.
Dancing auroras spread over the sky in different hues and colors. Within no time the entire white ice turns into green. Sometimes these auroras are so intensely bright green in color that the entire environment around turns green.
If it can be this level interesting and beautiful on television, than i cant guess how good it would look in real or with bare eyes. I have wish that one day it would be possible for me to watch this Aurora light show. Till than i must say thanks to channel that they showed us this level interesting knowledgeable things.
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