Get ready – Scientist Preidict 2025 will be a first -class year for Aurora Borealis displays.
Find a dark spot in front of the urban lights to see this heavenly ballet made of green, red and violet, which is created like tapes that run across the sky.
But as calming as they seem, the colorful lights are actually born in an act of chaos.
Explosive plasma towers that break out on the sun send clouds with billions of charged particles that lawn lawn. This particle, which is designated by a so -called sun wind, reach the earth in a few days and hit our top atmosphere at an incredible speed of up to 750 km per second.
Although most of these sun particles are distracted, a certain amount drives the magnetic field of the earth to the poles on which the protective field is the weakest, and they sneak into our atmosphere.
When you occur, these particles collide with gases and create a flash of light when the electrons quickly change between the orbits of different energy.
“It is a similar physics as in neon signs. Electricity excites the atoms in the gas in the glass pipes. That is why these signs release their brilliant colors, ”says Danielle Pahud, instructor in the physics and astronomy department at the University of Manitoba.
The colors generated in an Aurora are a product of the kind of gas that these collisions occur in the atmosphere.
Green is the most common color, generated when charged particles that are worn by the sun wind collide with oxygen molecules at heights of 100 to 300 km. Higher up – at around 300 to 400 km – produce collisions with oxygen atoms red. Excited nitrogen atoms create the most valued auroral colors: purple pink, which you can see in superactive displays, in which particles penetrate up to about 100 km above the ground. The lower edge of an Aurora sometimes shows a pink or dark red edge, which is emitted by nitrogen molecules at heights of about 100 km.
The more violent the plasma towers are on the sun, the better the chances of seeing spectacular light shows above the earth. The current astral schedule is inclined in our favor.
“The sun has an 11-year sun cycle. Solar maximum has just been declared, so we are now at the peak. In the middle part of this cycle, the sun releases the most coronal masses. These are the storms that, when they are driven to earth, tend to create the greatest incidence of the northern lights, ”says Pahud.
Keep your eye to the sky – dazzling facts
The best place to see Aurora Borealis: Every goal in the “Auroral zone”, which is located within a radius of 2,500 kilometers around the North Pole. This includes Churchill, one., With an average of 300 nights Aurora activities annually.
Main season for the consideration: Between September and April, when the sky becomes darker. March is generally considered best in North America, with more geomagnetically active days than in any other month. October is a second.
Why Northern Lights look less alive in real life than in photos: The human eye is not good at recognizing color at night. The brightest Auroras are roughly comparable to moonlight. Cameras react far more sensitive to this bad light, and their long exposure can grasp colors and details that we do not see.
Northern lights can also be seen from above. Astronauts on the international space station receive a completely different perspective. The Auroras typically range from 100 to 300 km above the surface of the earth, while the space station circles at a height of 400 km.
These light shows pass on other planets. The Auroras on Jupiter should be particularly striking – a hundred times larger and more intense than on earth because of the strong magnetic field of the gas giant.
Northern lights can be accompanied by audible sounds if the conditions are correct. Historically speaking, the idea that Aurora's sound was produced was often released as a psychoacoustic phenomenon, but researchers from Aalto University in Finland recently recorded pop and crackling. They say that these noises can come from a layer of warm air about 80 meters above the ground, which can occur in calm, cold winting nights. This layer enables a kind of static electricity to accumulate in the sky during a geomagnetic storm. When this electricity is released, it can be heard from the ground.
The northern lights are also part of the brand history of the University of Manitoba and celebrate the colorful collisions of people and ideas that drive our province and world.
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