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Issue Three: Polar Patterns: Day, Night, and Seasons (May 2008)

The Aurora: Fire in the Sky

by Stephen Whitt
The northern lights (or the southern lights, if youre from the Southern
Hemisphere) are eerie, multicolored streaks and shapes that appear in the night
sky, as if from nowhere. To find out where they come from, well have to take a
little trip. Are you ready?
Imagine you are on the Sun. The Suns temperature is much too hot for
anything alive. But you arent alive. You are a tiny particle so small that you cant
be seen in even the most powerful microscope.
Now imagine that you are hurled away from the Sun. Believe it or not, this
actually happens all the time. The Sun sends out streams of tiny particles every
second. We call this stream the solar wind.
Heat causes the solar wind. The Sun is so hot that particles fly off its
surface, a little like steam rising from a hot bowl of soup.
Imagine youre a part of this solar wind. Youre flying away from the Sun
faster than the fastest spaceship. Directly ahead of you is Earth, a pretty bluewhite ball. Youre moving fast, but Earth is still far away. It takes you a little over
four days to make the trip to Earth.
What happens when you reach Earth? To find out, lets leave the solar wind
for a moment and travel back in time, to meet a scientist and explorer named
Kristian Birkeland.
Kristian Birkeland wanted to understand the aurora (another name for the
northern and southern lights). The mysterious light was often seen near the North
Flesch-Kincaid RL = 5.2
Copyright May 2008 - The Ohio State University. Funded by the National Science Foundation.
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Issue Three: Polar Patterns: Day, Night, and Seasons (May 2008)

and South Poles. It wasnt usually seen closer to the equator. People described
the light as a fire in the sky. But what could it be?
Birkeland had an idea. He knew that Earth was a giant magnet. Like all
magnets, Earth has a north magnetic pole and a south magnetic pole. Birkeland
led an expedition to Norway to measure Earths magnetic field.
He found that near the North Pole, the magnetic field lines dont run along
the Earths surface, the way they do near the equator. Instead, the field lines go
almost straight up and down. What could that mean?
Think of the Earth as a magnet. Near the middle of the magnet (where the
Earths equator would be) the lines of force run right alongside the magnet. But
near the North and South Poles, the lines run almost straight into the ends of the
magnet.
Kristian Birkeland now knew more about the Earths magnetic field. But he
still didnt know what caused the aurora. How were the two things related?
To understand how these things are related, you need to know a little
about electricity.
Have you ever rubbed your feet across the carpet and then touched
something made of metal? If you have, youve felt a shock! You build up an
electric charge when you rub your feet on the carpet. The charge moves from
your finger to the metal when you touch it. This movement is what causes the
shock.
The particles from the Sun also carry an electric charge. But how does this
charge create the aurora?
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Copyright May 2008 - The Ohio State University. Funded by the National Science Foundation.
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Issue Three: Polar Patterns: Day, Night, and Seasons (May 2008)

Heres the key idea. Electricity and magnets affect each other. Watch a
compass during a thunderstorm. Youll see the magnet inside the compass (what
we call the needle) move every time lightning flashes across the sky.
Now we know that electricity affects magnets. But do magnets affect
electricity? Yes! Kristian Birkeland showed how by building a magnetic model of
the Earth. He found that the charged particles traveled along the magnetic field
lines. They moved away from the equator and followed the lines to the North and
South Poles.
Now lets go back to those real charged particles flying off the Sun. Just like
in the model, the charged particles are pushed by the Earths magnetic field
toward the poles. Once they get there, they follow the magnetic field lines down
toward the ground.
Before the charged particles can get to the ground, though, they smash into
air molecules. The collisions make the molecules glow with beautiful, bright
colors green, pink, and red. This is the aurora, light created by tiny particles
from the Sun smashing into the Earths atmosphere at the end of a four-day
journey through space. Thats quite a trip!
----------------------------------------------------------Glossary
aurora - another name for the northern or southern lights
compass - a tool that measures Earths magnetic field and is used to find
directions
Flesch-Kincaid RL = 5.2
Copyright May 2008 - The Ohio State University. Funded by the National Science Foundation.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.

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Issue Three: Polar Patterns: Day, Night, and Seasons (May 2008)

electric charge a measure of the extra positive or negative particles that an

object has
expedition - a trip made by a group of people for a particular purpose
magnetic field the space all around a magnet where the force of the magnet can
act
molecules a grouping of two or more atoms joined together
particles tiny pieces of matter that make up solids, liquids, and gases
solar wind - electrically charged particles that come from the sun

Flesch-Kincaid RL = 5.2
Copyright May 2008 - The Ohio State University. Funded by the National Science Foundation.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.