You don't want to upset the spirits in the sky by calling them closer. We knew we shouldn't be doing it, and if they really started to move, we'd get frightened and not stay out too long.
Which, as in many tales, was the down-to-earth practicality that complements the elders' spiritual spin on the world. Asgeir Brekke is a physicist who has studied the northern lights for more than three decades, but he is also an expert on auroral lore and legend.
The walls of his office are hung with an intriguing mix of images, from radar stations to figures from northern mythology. Brekke is a soft-spoken man with a sweep of graying hair, and as we talked, he probed the images of death and life that recur in stories of aurora in different cultures—the links to spirits and battles between supernatural forces in the sky.
One was that Greenland's ice drew in so much power that it could light the beams of the aurora. Along similar lines, he said, other Scandinavians had wondered if the lights were reflections from the sea or even from the glinting scales of huge shoals of herring.
Brekke circled back to science. Even though as a scientist you are supposed to have some sort of objectivity, like an artist, you are inspired by them. In collaboration with Dagfinn Bakke, an artist in Lofoten, Brekke has produced a book of watercolor paintings, scientific accounts, folktales, and poetry to show how people in Norway have related to auroras over the centuries. As I'd now come to understand, Brekke's enthusiasm for the lights represents a common bond between people who live beneath them and those who study them from afar.
When he ended our meeting by reading poems about auroras, it seemed only fitting. All rights reserved. Poetry and space physics? Of course there's a connection. Just look up when the heavens dance. Share Tweet Email. Read This Next Wild parakeets have taken a liking to London. Animals Wild Cities Wild parakeets have taken a liking to London Love them or hate them, there's no denying their growing numbers have added an explosion of color to the city's streets.
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Meet the people trying to help. Animals Whales eat three times more than previously thought. Environment Planet Possible India bets its energy future on solar—in ways both small and big. The researchers noted that dunes are extremely rare. This begs the question: what other types of auroras can we discover if we insist on looking close enough? By subscribing, you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.
You may unsubscribe at any time. A royal astronomer under Babylon's King Nebuchadnezzar II inscribed his report of the phenomenon on a tablet dated to B. The science behind the northern lights wasn't theorized until the turn of the 20th century. Norwegian scientist Kristian Birkeland proposed that electrons emitted from sunspots produced the atmospheric lights after striking the Earth's magnetic field. The theory would eventually prove correct, but not until long after Birkeland's death.
At any given moment, the sun is ejecting charged particles from its corona, or upper atmosphere , creating what's called the solar wind.
When that wind slams into Earth's ionosphere , or upper atmosphere, the aurora is born. In the Northern Hemisphere, the phenomenon is called the northern lights aurora borealis , while in the Southern Hemisphere, it's called the southern lights aurora australis. The bright colors of the northern lights are dictated by the chemical composition of Earth's atmosphere.
While solar wind is constant, the sun's emissions go through a roughly year cycle of activity. Sometimes there's a lull, but other times, there are vast storms that bombard Earth with extreme amounts of energy. This is when the northern lights are at their brightest and most frequent. The last solar maximum, or period of peak activity, occurred in , according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration NOAA , placing the next one in approximately They are known as 'Aurora borealis' in the north and 'Aurora australis' in the south..
Auroral displays appear in many colours although pale green and pink are the most common. Shades of red, yellow, green, blue, and violet have been reported. The lights appear in many forms from patches or scattered clouds of light to streamers, arcs, rippling curtains or shooting rays that light up the sky with an eerie glow. The Northern Lights are actually the result of collisions between gaseous particles in the Earth's atmosphere with charged particles released from the sun's atmosphere.
Variations in colour are due to the type of gas particles that are colliding. 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 miles. Nitrogen produces blue or purplish-red aurora. The connection between the Northern Lights and sunspot activity has been suspected since about Thanks to research conducted since the 's, we now know that electrons and protons from the sun are blown towards the earth on the 'solar wind'.
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