{"id":7258,"date":"2020-09-30T13:53:57","date_gmt":"2020-09-30T13:53:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nordnorge.com\/en\/?post_type=artikler&p=7258"},"modified":"2025-10-30T15:06:57","modified_gmt":"2025-10-30T15:06:57","slug":"what-are-the-northern-lights","status":"publish","type":"artikler","link":"https:\/\/nordnorge.com\/en\/artikkel\/what-are-the-northern-lights\/","title":{"rendered":"What are the northern lights?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\t\t
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\n\t\t\t\tThe Northern lights are one of mother nature\u2019s greatest light shows. An enigma that draws thousands to the northern polar regions each year, inspiring myth, legend and an incomparable sense of awe.\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\n\t\t<\/div>\n\n\n

What causes this phantom in the night skies over the high latitudes? The story is a complex riddle of scientific discoveries that are still taking place to this day, which can often make it difficult to understand what on Earth is going on. Therefore, this article aims to make the science a little more digestible, while throwing in some astonishing facts along the way. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The technical names for the night time displays are aurora borealis (northern lights)<\/a> for the northern hemisphere and aurora australis<\/a> (southern lights) for the southern hemisphere. In this article, the term northern lights will predominantly be used, but the same science applies to the southern lights that are seen around the Antarctic. The reason the southern lights can often be overlooked is due to the fact that the strongest auroras occur on the Antarctic continent itself or over the surrounding oceans and land fringes<\/a> where few people are located. While in the northern hemisphere, the lights occur over highly populated areas so are seen more frequently, such as in the northern Norwegian town of Kirkenes<\/a> seen in figure 1. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Northern Lights somewhere between Kirkenes and the Russian border @ William Copeland<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

We begin our story on the sun <\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Our sun is a powerhouse of energy. At four and a half billion years old, this giant creates energy on a humongous scale. In the dense, hot and deep core of the sun, hydrogen is forced together by gravity to create helium, resulting in a small release of energy. This reaction occurs billions of times over with enough energy produced in 1 second to power modern civilisation for around 500,000 years! This energy makes its way to the surface of the sun and is released in the form of a stream of electrically charged particles, collectively known as, the solar wind<\/a>. The solar wind can blow anywhere from 250 to over 800 kilometres per second depending on the state of the sun. There are different mechanisms and features on the sun\u2019s surface which can cause the solar wind to impact Earth and create the northern lights, these are summed up in figure 2.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\u00a9 William Copeland<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

The sunspot cycles are are all hyped up<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Now this wouldn\u2019t be an article on the northern lights if we don\u2019t discuss sunspots<\/a>! A sunspot is an area of high magnetism on the sun\u2019s surface which can release large eruptions of solar material into space called coronal mass ejections, as can be seen in figure 2. Sunspots can easily be seen by scientists from Earth and are identifiable as dark spots on the sun\u2019s surface (figure 3). We have a long record<\/a> of sunspot numbers on the sun as far back as the 1600s, yet there is a lot of misinformation out there about sunspots and the aurora, mostly with regards to the 11 year solar cycle. <\/p>\n\n\n

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<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

No sunspots does not equal no northern lights <\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Around every 11 years, the magnetic field of the sun flips so the north pole becomes the south and the south becomes the north. During each cycle there is a solar maximum (many sunspots) and a solar minimum (few to no sunspots). Many believe that around solar maximum is the best and only time to see the aurora, this is wrong. Yes, solar maximum will provide many big solar storms<\/a>, but solar minimum isn\u2019t devoid of northern lights. In fact, during this last minimum from 2017-2020, we have witnessed some incredible displays of the northern lights over Northern Norway (see figure 4).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Many also believe that sunspots are the only way the solar wind can cause auroras on Earth, also false. Coronal holes, coronal mass ejections from solar prominences and slight fluctuations in the incoming solar wind can produce intense auroras without the need for sunspots. The next solar maximum<\/a> is expected to peak between 2022 and 2026, when we can expect more frequent solar storming.<\/p>\n\n\n\t

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