Aurora- The dance of spirits

Aurora in Latin means “dawn”. In the Roman mythology Aurora was the name of the Goddess of Dawn who renewed herself every morning announcing the arrival of Sun. She had two siblings, a brother- Sol, the sun, and a sister- Luna, the moon. Myth has it that one of her lovers was the Prince of Troy, Tithonus who was a mortal and would one day age and die. Being deeply in love with him she wanted to live with her lover for eternity. She asked Jupiter to grant him immortality which he ultimately did but she failed to ask for eternal youth to accompany his immortality so Tithonus eventually aged and remained old forever. Aurora later turned him into a grasshopper.

This Roman mythology goddess is now associated with a natural phenomenon predominantly occurring in the high altitudes of Arctic and Antarctic. This phenomenon produces beautiful bands of colors in the sky spreading across the horizon. Auroras mostly occur in the Auroral Zone which is in 3° to 6° latitude at all the local times. In other northern latitudes the effect is known as the auroral borealis (aurora is the Roman Goddess of dawn and Boreas is the Greek word which means wind) or the northern lights. Auroras can also be seen in the latitudes below the Auroral Zone due to the enlargement of the geomagnetic storms.

Although beautiful in occurrence and a strange sight to behold, complete reason for the physical processes of auroras is still not known but the basically t occurs due to the interaction of the solar winds with the earth’s magnetic field. The solar winds are the stream of plasmas released from the upper atmosphere of the sun and consist mostly of electrons, protons and alpha particles.

The altitude where the auroras occurred was figured out by Carl Stormer and his colleagues who used cameras to triangulate the auroras and concluded that most of them shine between 90 to 150 kms above the ground level, sometimes extending to the heights of 1000kms.

The emission of photons from the Earth’s atmosphere causes the auroras to emit light. When the flux of energized electrons hit nitrogen and oxygen in the atmosphere they regain an electron. This results in the emission of energy by the nitrogen and oxygen molecules because of regaining the stable state and that energy is a photon which enters our eyes to show different forms of auroras floating overhead and shining in the night sky. Depending on the type of ionized atom, the auroras changes colors. Like in the case of oxygen, green or orange red colors are visible depending upon the amount of energy absorbed and in the case of nitrogen, blue or red.

These beautiful colors paint our sky at night and make us believe that no matter how much we try to learn about Mother Nature, she will keep on surprising us.

You can also refer this video for further insignt.

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