{"id":2212,"date":"2019-12-06T17:03:27","date_gmt":"2019-12-06T17:03:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nordnorge.com\/en\/?post_type=artikler&p=2212"},"modified":"2025-09-01T11:05:24","modified_gmt":"2025-09-01T11:05:24","slug":"learn-about-the-northern-lights-at-tromso-museum","status":"publish","type":"artikler","link":"https:\/\/nordnorge.com\/en\/artikkel\/learn-about-the-northern-lights-at-tromso-museum\/","title":{"rendered":"Make your own Northern Lights at Troms\u00f8 Museum"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\t\t
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\n\t\t\t\tTroms\u00f8 Museum offers a guided northern lights tour, where you\u2019ll learn more about, and hopefully also experience, the northern lights. With this tour, you\u2019ll be ready when \u201cMiss Aurora\u201d invites you to dance. \n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\n\t\t<\/div>\n\n\n

\u201cNah, no northern lights today, it\u2019s not cold enough.\u201d Smug locals often spout this type of nonsense to tourists over a cup of coffee. The northern lights have nothing to do with temperature. The magic happens much higher up in the atmosphere. At Troms\u00f8 Museum, visitors get a detailed explanation for the phenomenon before they go aurora hunting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A delicate dance in green<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The northern lights assume many shapes\u2014three arches, a curtain lighter than air blowing in the wind, a treble clef, the elegant neck of a swan\u2014all in shades of pale green, chartreuse, mint or aquamarine, often with a tinge of pink along the edges. Sometimes the sky explodes in a corona, with rays shooting off in every direction in shades of pink, purple, green and white. The colour palette has almost an 80s feel to it, with light, floaty and elegant shapes against black rock, ice and snow, enough to render us all speechless.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kristian Birkeland is the father of aurora science as we know it<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Is it a bridge from our world to the gods, as the Vikings once believed? Is it a foreboding of pestilence, war and dark times? Or did the somewhat more intellectual explanation from the thirteenth century \u201cKing\u2019s Mirror\u201d\u2014Konungs skuggsj\u00e1<\/em>\u2014get it right in claiming that the polar ice was so powerful it made the air glow? 

Norwegian scientist Kirstian Birkeland, who used to be on the Norwegian 200-kroner note, solved the mystery: Loaded particles from the sun hit the outer layers of our atmosphere. The observatory he founded on Haldetoppen near Alta in 1899 revealed the secrets of the northern lights. He figured out where the northern lights form, how the phenomenon occurs and which elements ae involved in the process.<\/p>\n\n\n\t

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