the.com/northern lights
Solar wind punching Earth's magnetic shield, and the shield glows instead of breaking.
means The aurora borealis — bands of colored light (usually green, sometimes red or purple) that shimmer across the night sky in polar regions.
from English borrows the phenomenon's Latin name, aurora borealis — 'dawn of the north wind,' from Aurora, Roman goddess of dawn, and Boreas, the north wind. The plain-English 'northern lights' is just a homegrown translation, first showing up in English well before science could explain what was actually glowing up there; the name describes the show, not the cause.
- actual cause
- charged solar particles hitting atmospheric oxygen and nitrogen
- color code
- green is oxygen, red is high-altitude oxygen, blue is nitrogen
- sound myth
- some observers report faint crackling, still scientifically unexplained
- other planets
- jupiter and saturn have auroras too, just uninvited