The “why” I am asking here has two connotations:

• Why is this the title of my next blog?
• And, why do the northern lights exist?

To start with the blog question, and to introduce this new Remote series…

Even before I embarked on my trip to Svalbard and Greenland,  I had started the planning for this next one. I knew that we are currently in a period of exceptional solar flare activity which is ideal for viewing the northern.  And so, I felt some pressure to take advantage of this and venture back north. Catching a glimpse of this wonderful spectacle might have been the guiding factor in the timing of the trip. However, I am naturally fatalistic as to whether we will indeed be fortunate enough to see them in all their splendour. So, naturally, there are other places and points of interest which I am very excited to visit. More about this in my next post.

Now to the main topic of this post:

Why do the northern lights appear? What are they, and how do they form?

I will attempt to provide some answers to these questions without delving into too much scientific theory (after all, I’m no scientist!!!)

Particles from the sun travel to earth . The earth’s magnetic field forms a barrier of protection from these energized particles. The existence of the 2 magnetic poles (north magnetic pole and south magnetic pole) plays a role in how the particles transform into the dramatic light play.

Solar flares  are explosions which occur on the surface of the sun, resulting in charged particles being emitted and creating solar wind.

The wind crashes into the earth’s ionosphere.

The northern lights are called aurora borealis. The southern lights are called the aurora Australia. It was Galileo Galilei who first used the name “aurora borealis’ in 1619. Aurora is the Roman goddess of dawn, and Boreas is the Greek god of the north  wind. The first record of the northern lights is believed to be a cave painting in France which has been dated to 30,000 years ago.

Vikings believed that the northern lights were a reflection of light from the armour of the Valkyrie, the supernatural women who gathered slain warriors to transport them to the afterlife.

The bright colours come from the chemical makeup of our atmosphere. Specifically, the different atoms which make up our atmosphere. Just like fingerprints, each chemical atom generates a unique set of colours because of the way the atom absorbs and radiates light. For example purple, pink and red are produced by nitrogen and green is produced by oxygen.

The auroras appear in wave-like movements because of:

• The motion of the planet
• The motion of the particles in the space close to the earth
• The changing nature of the actual solar bursts

The aurora’s appear in a cycle of approximately 11 years.  This is not because of changes in the solar wind, which remains fairly constant. It is because of changes in the sun’s emissions. The solar maximum is predicted to occur from now until early 2025.

Hence the decision to make this trip now!

Source: Space.com “Northern Lights (aurora borealis): what they are and how to see them”