**Subhaan-Allah… i have recently come to know of this beautiful, amazing activity of nature… another marvelous creation of Allah (swt).
Well basically its a beautiful natural display of different colours of light illuminating the night skies in certain parts of the world.
So… i mean fireworks are nothing compared to this natural performance of different displays of light.
Anyway, read on and explore the Creation of Allah (swt). Theres loads more information than this… but i thought “lets not get too scientific, not alot of people care about fact n figures”… so all those that wish to know the facts and the know hows then i suggest u do abit of googling and research.
If anyone wants some nice chosen pictures of these lights (off the net), may PM me. There are many displays of colours in the nightskies of these auroras including blue, green, red, purple yellow etc
Jazaak-Allah.**
What are the Northern/Southern Lights ?
They are mesmerizing, dynamic displays of light that appear in the night skies.
Northern Lights is the name of a light phenomenon often seen in the northern regions of the earth. The scientific name for the phenomena is “Aurora Borealis”. Also its counterpart, the Southern Lights is seen in the southern regions which is known as “Aurora Australis”.
The auroras display a continous oval zone around the magnetic pole in both hemispheres. The Aurora Borealis occur around the magnetic south pole in the Arctic, and Aurora Australis occur around the magnetic north pole in Antarctica.
What causes them?
In a nutshell, the Northern Lights occur as a result of solar particles colliding with the gases in the earth’s atmosphere.
Northern lights originate from our sun. During large explosions and flares, huge quantities of solar particles are thrown out of the sun and into deep space. These plasma clouds travel through space with speeds varying from 300 to 1000 kilometers per second.
But even with such speeds (over a million kph), it takes these plasma clouds two to three days to reach our planet. When they are closing in on Earth, they are captured by Earth’s magnetic field (the magnetosphere) and guided towards Earth’s two magnetic poles; the geomagnetic south pole and the geomagnetic north pole.
On their way down towards the geomagnetic poles, the solar particles are stopped by Earth’s atmosphere, which acts as an effective shield against these deadly particles.
When the solar particles are stopped by the atmosphere, they collide with the atmospheric gases present, and the collision energy between the solar particle and the gas molecule is emitted as a photon - a light particle. And when you have many such collisions, you have an aurora - lights that may seem to move across the sky.
Where do they occur ?
The aurora oval occurs in countries which surround the north and south pole.
The Northern Lights are mainly visible in the following regions;
-
Northern parts of the Nordic countries (Sweden, Norway, Finland, Iceland) , including all of Greenland and Svalbard.
-
Northern parts of Alaska, USA.
-
Northern and middle parts of Canada.
-
Northern parts of Russia.
Actually, 90 % of the time, auroral displays occur only within these areas.
On (very) rare occasions the oval can cover the entire hemisphere down to Mexico, but most of the time it stays in these areas.
The Southern Lights are mainly visible in the following regions;
Australia
New Zealand
Antarctica
**For further reading and links visit >>>>> **http://www.northern-lights.no/