Monday, February 15, 2010

About How do southern lights, northern lights, southern aurora aand aurora borealis work in the sky

How do southern lights, northern lights, southern aurora aand aurora borealis work in the sky?
How do southern lights, northern lights, southern aurora aand aurora borealis work? What is it that makes them look so amazing?
Earth Sciences & Geology - 4 Answers
Random Answers, Critics, Comments, Opinions :
1 :
It's U.v. rays entering the atmosphere through the hole in the ozone layer. While the lights are beautiful to look at, they're also a deadly concoction of solar rays entering our atmosphere. Human beings are at the total becking call of our sun. lets enjoy while its there!
2 :
The magnetic solar wind connects with Earths magnetic field and the electrons collide creating different colors of light that we can see from the pole regions. They are mostly blue and green.
3 :
charged particles react with the charged particles in the ionosphere\thermosphere where it creates lights and disrupts AM radio waves
4 :
There are only two. the northern lights are the Aurora Borealis, the southern lights are the Aurora Austral is. WHen charged high energy particles- mostly from the sun- hit the earths magnetosphere , the follow the fields lines toward the poles A lot of energy is dissipated as the follow the lines towards the ground and lose their high energy. Photos of the lights taken from space show them clearly as curtains of light well confined to the magnetic poles.
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About how does the Aurora work
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Monday, February 1, 2010

About how does Aurora work

How does Aurora work?
I want to know something about the northern and southern lights coz i think they are so beautiful! Can someone explain it to me in simple words? I know wat a manetic field is and i know wat is energy. But dont give me conepts which are too hard to understand, i'm just a high school girl. But please do give me details about it, as much as you can. Thanks! =]
Astronomy & Space - 2 Answers
Random Answers, Critics, Comments, Opinions :
1 :
basically, the sun emits high amounts of energy that are deflected by the earths magnetic field in most places, but at the poles, the energy can travel down the magnetic field and reach the top of our atmosphere, one there it is transferred to the electrons in the atoms of the air that get so much energy they jump to a different "electron shell" and back again, this emits light energy that we observe, this works the same way as a fluorescent tube light, exiting gasses so that they emit light.
2 :
Also known as the Northern Lights, an Aurora is a beautiful natural phenomenon that often occurs in the polar regions of Earth. It appears as colorful clouds and rays of green and red (and sometimes blue) light that dance across the sky. The aurora borealis and aurora australis (Latin for "northern" and "southern" dawn, respectively) occur in symmetric ovals centered on the northern and southern magnetic poles of Earth. The aurora is formed when charged particles (electrons and protons) are guided by the Earth's magnetic field into the atmosphere near the poles. When these particles collide with atoms and molecules of the upper atmosphere, primarily oxygen and nitrogen, some of the energy in these collisions is transformed into the visible light that characterizes the aurora. The energy source for the aurora is 149 million kilometers (km) (93 million miles) from Earth at the sun. The sun continuously emits charged particles (mostly protons and electrons), which are the byproducts of thermonuclear reactions occurring inside the sun. These charged particles make up the solar wind, which travels away from the sun through space at speeds ranging from 300 to 1,000 km/sec.—about a million miles per hour. Traveling at this high speed, the solar particles can reach the Earth in two to three days. At Earth, the steady solar wind is deflected by Earth's magnetic field, or magnetosphere. The solar wind flows around the magnetosphere much like a river flows around a stone. It also pushes on the magnetosphere and distorts it so that instead of a symmetric set of magnetic field lines—like one might have around a bar magnet—the magnetosphere is stretched and elongated into a comet shape with a long tail trailing away from Earth on the side away from the sun. When there is a disturbance on the sun, such as a solar flare or coronal mass ejection, it can produce a disturbance in the solar wind. This in turn will cause a disturbance in the balance between the solar wind and Earth's magnetic field. As a result, electrons and protons are accelerated within the magnetosphere. These charged particles are constrained to the magnetic field lines much like beads on a wire. The accelerated particles will travel down the magnetic field lines of Earth and collide with the atoms and molecules of the upper atmosphere where the magnetic field lines reach down to surface of the Earth near the north and south magnetic poles. When the particles from the magnetosphere collide with the atoms and molecules of the atmosphere, the particle's energy can be transferred to the atoms and molecules (typically O, N, and N2) of the atmosphere forming excited states of O, N and N2. When these finally release their energy and return to their normal ground state, they give up energy in the form of light. This is the light that we see from the ground as an aurora.
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