The Northern Lights are one of nature’s most impressive spectacles, and sometimes they come closer to your country than you think.
Auroras are also called the northern lights if you’re in that hemisphere, and they’re a good reason to travel to countries closer to the pole. During the night, bright greenish lights cross the sky forming curtains, rays, spirals or flashes, which cover the entire celestial vault. However, many people have never had the opportunity to see them, as this phenomenon only occurs near the planet’s polar ice caps.
EIELSON AIR FORCE BASE, Alaska – The Aurora Borealis, or Northern Lights, shines over Bear Lake here on January 18. The lights are the result of solar particles colliding with gases in Earth’s atmosphere. The early Eskimos and Indians believed different legends about the northern lights, such as the souls of animals dancing in the sky or the souls of fallen enemies trying to rise again. (U.S. Air Force photo by Senior Airman Joshua Strang)
The early Eskimos and Indians believed in different legends about the northern lights, such as the souls of animals dancing in the sky or the souls of fallen enemies trying to resurrect. In fact, the reason there are polar lights is simply that the Earth is a giant magnet.
The Earth’s core is made of iron and nickel, and surrounded by a molten layer, which causes it to rotate inside the planet, producing a magnetic field between the poles. Believe it or not, this magnetic field is what allows life as we know it to exist.
Earth’s magnetic field blocks the effects of cosmic radiation and the solar wind, the flow of charged particles reaching us from the Sun that would otherwise annihilate us. When these particles encounter Earth’s magnetic field, gases in the atmosphere become ionized, electrically excited, and begin to emit light. In a way, the northern lights should fill us with joy, because they show us in a visible way how the planet is protecting us from the radiation that hits us from space.
The journey to hunt the auroras
Most polar light occurs in a band known as the “auroral zone”, which is between 10 and 20° latitude, measured from the Earth’s poles. This means that the northern lights are visible near the Arctic Circle in countries like Alaska, Canada, Iceland, Greenland, Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia. In the case of the southern hemisphere, the aurora australis is visible from Antarctica, southern Chile and Argentina, South Africa, New Zealand and Australia.
However, during so-called geomagnetic storms, produced by storms or solar flares, the northern lights can reach lower latitudes. On this map you can see the lines that delimit the range of the northern lights in different parts of the world.
One of the best ways to see the Northern Lights is from space, something that is currently only available to a few people, although it could become more accessible in the coming years. In the meantime, we can enjoy the images that the International Space Station (IIS) sends us of an aurora borealis.
Viewed from a satellite, the northern lights form a sort of oval of light around the pole, which fluctuates in amplitude and shape. The best place to contemplate an aurora polar, therefore, is not the one that is located directly under this ring of light, but those more distant places that allow you to contemplate how the aurora stretches over the horizon.
In cases of increased solar activity, the northern lights can be seen in the northern states of the United States, the United Kingdom and Ireland, and in northern Germany and Poland, where they usually do not reach. Geomagnetic storms are also associated with sunspot cycles, which repeat approximately every 11 years.
The next solar cycle is scheduled for July 2025 and it will be the next time we see the polar lights in all their splendor. In the meantime, we can always enjoy our next trip to the north or south of the planet to see the battle between the earth and the sun live.
Science of Quo Travel Section sponsored by hyundai