INTRODUCTION:

The northern lights are an atmospheric phenomenon that's regarded as the Holy Grail of
skywatching.

The northern lights, or the aurora borealis, are beautiful dancing waves of light that have
captivated people for millennia. But for all its beauty, this spectacular light show is a rather
violent event.

Energized particles from the sun slam into Earth's upper atmosphere at speeds of up to 45
million mph (72 million kph), but our planet's magnetic field protects us from the onslaught.

As Earth's magnetic field redirects the particles toward the poles — there are southern lights,
too, which you can read about below — the dramatic process transforms into a cinematic
atmospheric phenomenon that dazzles and fascinates scientists and skywatchers alike.

THE HISTORY OF THE NORTHERN LIGHTS:

Though it was Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei who coined the name "aurora borealis" in
1619 — after the Roman goddess of dawn, Aurora, and the Greek god of the north wind,
Boreas — the earliest suspected record of the northern lights is in a 30,000-year-old cave
painting in France(opens in new tab).

Since that time, civilizations around the world have marveled at the celestial phenomenon,
ascribing all sorts of origin myths to the dancing lights. One North American Inuit
legend(opens in new tab) suggests that the northern lights are spirits playing ball with a
walrus head, while the Vikings thought the phenomenon was light reflecting off the armor of
the Valkyrie, the supernatural maidens who brought warriors into the afterlife.

Early astronomers also mentioned the northern lights in their records. A royal astronomer
under Babylon's King Nebuchadnezzar II inscribed his report of the phenomenon on a tablet
dated to 567 B.C., for example, while a Chinese report from 193 B.C. also notes the aurora,
according to NASA(opens in new tab).

The science behind the northern lights wasn't theorized until the turn of the 20th century.
Norwegian scientist Kristian Birkeland proposed that electrons emitted from sunspots
produced the atmospheric lights after being guided toward the poles by Earth's magnetic
field. The theory would eventually prove correct, but not until long after Birkeland's 1917
death.

WHAT ARE THE NORTHERN LIGHTS?:

At any given moment, the sun is ejecting charged particles from its corona, or upper
atmosphere, creating what's called the solar wind. When that wind slams into Earth's
ionosphere, or upper atmosphere, the aurora is born. In the Northern Hemisphere, the
phenomenon is called the northern lights (aurora borealis), while in the Southern
Hemisphere, it's called the southern lights (aurora australis).

"These particles are deflected towards the poles of Earth by our planet's magnetic field and
interact with our atmosphere, depositing energy and causing the atmosphere to fluoresce,"
said astronomer Billy Teets, the director of Dyer Observatory at Vanderbilt University in
Nashville, Tennessee.

The bright colors of the northern lights are dictated by the chemical composition of Earth's
atmosphere.

"Every type of atom or molecule, whether it's atomic hydrogen or a molecule like carbon
dioxide, absorbs and radiates its own unique set of colors, which is analogous to how every
human being has a unique set of fingerprints," Teets told Space.com. "Some of the dominant
colors seen in aurorae are red, a hue produced by the nitrogen molecules, and green, which
is produced by oxygen molecules."

While solar wind is constant, the sun's emissions go through a roughly 11-year cycle of
activity. Sometimes there's a lull, but other times, there are vast storms that bombard Earth
with extreme amounts of energy. This is when the northern lights are at their brightest and
most frequent. The last solar maximum, or period of peak activity, occurred in 2014,
according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration(opens in new tab)
(NOAA), placing the next one in approximately 2025.

Despite plenty of advances in heliophysics and atmospheric science, much about the
northern lights remains a mystery. For example, researchers weren't entirely sure how the
energized particles in the solar wind get accelerated to their extraordinary speeds (45 million
mph) until June 2021, when a study published in the journal Nature Communications(opens
in new tab) confirmed that a phenomenon called Alfvén waves gave the particles a boost.
Alfvén waves are low-frequency yet powerful undulations that occur in plasma due to
electromagnetic forces; the electrons that create the northern lights "surf" along these waves
in Earth's atmosphere, accelerating rapidly.

NASA is also on the hunt for clues about how the northern lights work. In 2018, the space
agency launched the Parker Solar Probe, which is currently orbiting the sun and will
eventually get close enough to "touch" the corona. While there, the spacecraft will collect
information that could reveal more about the northern lights.

NORTHERN LIGHTS, SOUTHERN LIGHTS AND STEVE:

On Earth, the northern lights' counterpart in the Southern Hemisphere is the southern lights
— they are physically the same and differ only in their location. As such, scientists expect
them to occur simultaneously during a solar storm, but sometimes the onset of one lags
behind the other.

"One of the more challenging aspects of nightside aurorae involves the comparison of the
aurora borealis with the aurora australis," said Steven Petrinec, a physicist at the aerospace
company Lockheed Martin who specializes in magnetospheric and heliospheric physics.

"While some auroral emissions occur in both hemispheres at the same magnetic local time,
other emissions appear in opposing sectors in the two hemispheres at different times — for
example, pre-midnight in the Northern Hemisphere and post-midnight in the Southern
Hemisphere," Petrinec told.
The hemispheric asymmetry of the aurora(opens in new tab) is due in part to the sun's
magnetic field interfering with Earth's magnetic field, but research into the phenomenon is
ongoing.

Another aurora-like occurrence on Earth is STEVE ("Strong Thermal Emission Velocity

Enhancement"). Like the northern and southern lights, STEVE is a glowing atmospheric
phenomenon, but it looks slightly different from its undulating auroral counterparts. "These
emissions appear as a narrow and distinct arc, are typically purple in color and often include
a green picket-fence structure that slowly moves westward," Petrinec said.

STEVE is also visible from lower latitudes, closer to the equator, than the auroras.

A 2019 study published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters(opens in new tab)
discovered that STEVE is the result of two mechanisms: The mauve streaks are caused by
the heating of charged particles in the upper atmosphere, while the picket-fence structure
results from electrons falling into the atmosphere. The latter process is the same driver of
the aurora, making STEVE a special kind of aurora hybrid.

AURORAS ON OTHER WORLDS:

Auroras occur on other planets, too — all that's required to make an aurora is an
atmosphere and a magnetic field.

"Auroras have been seen in the atmospheres of all the gas giant planets, which is not
surprising, since these planets all have robust magnetic fields," said Jeff Regester, an
instructor of physics and astronomy at High Point University in North Carolina. "More
surprisingly, auroras have also been discovered on both Venus and Mars, both of which
have very weak magnetic fields."

Indeed, scientists have catalogued three different types of Martian auroras. One occurs only
on the planet's dayside, another is a widespread nighttime feature fueled by strong solar
storms and another is a much patchier nightside phenomenon.

The Hope Mars orbiter, the United Arab Emirates' first-ever interplanetary mission, managed
to capture the discrete nocturnal aurora shortly after arriving at the Red Planet in early 2021.
The probe's observations could help scientists better understand this mysterious
phenomenon.

Jupiter's magnetic field is 20,000 times stronger than that of Earth, so the giant planet's
auroras are far brighter than the ones that blaze in our skies. And the Jupiter lights aren't just
driven by the solar wind: Most of the particles that cause the planet's auroras are blasted into
space by its close-orbiting moon Io, the most volcanic body in the solar system.

Astronomers have even caught glimpses of apparent auroral activity in other solar systems.
For example, two October 2021 studies reported the detection of radio waves emitted by
multiple red dwarfs, stars smaller and dimmer than our own sun.

These radio waves are likely associated with a sort of "backward" aurora, one that flares up
near stars and is driven by particles released by close-orbiting planets, researchers said.
"Our model for this radio emission from our stars is a scaled-up version of Jupiter and Io,
with a planet enveloped in the magnetic field of a star, feeding material into vast currents that
similarly power bright aurorae," Joseph Callingham, a radio astronomer at Leiden University
in the Netherlands and the Dutch national observatory ASTRON and co-author on both new
studies, said in a statement(opens in new tab). "It's a spectacle that has attracted our
attention from light-years away."

These feeder planets remain hypothetical at the moment; nobody has yet discovered any
circling the red dwarfs that the team studied. But if Callingham and his colleagues are right,
astronomers may have a powerful new planet-hunting technique at their disposal.

Auroras are expected to be relatively common in the skies of exoplanets as well. But we'll
have to get better looks at these faraway worlds to see their light shows directly.

WHERE AND WHEN TO SEE THE NORTHERN LIGHTS:

Seeing the northern lights with your own eyes is a bucket-list item for astronomy lovers and
travelers alike. Fortunately, they occur frequently.

"The northern lights are happening 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year,"
said photographer Chad Blakely, owner of the northern lights tour company Lights Over
Lapland(opens in new tab). But that doesn't mean they're easy to spot; you need to be at the
right place at the right time.

The best place to see the northern lights is any destination in the "auroral zone," the area
within an approximately 1,550-mile (2,500 kilometers) radius of the North Pole, according to
the Tromsø Geophysical Observatory(opens in new tab) in Norway. That's where the aurora
most frequently occurs, though the phenomenon can creep farther south during particularly
strong solar storms.

In March 1989, for example, a powerful solar eruption made the northern lights visible, albeit
briefly, to people as far south as Honduras. (There were some negative consequences as
well, however: The geomagnetic storm that supercharged the aurora also temporarily
knocked out electricity across the entire Canadian province of Quebec.)

Within the auroral zone, it's best to be as far away from city lights as possible to maximize
visibility. But it's pretty tricky to get into the middle of the Arctic wilderness, even with a guide,
so it's best to base yourself in a destination with solid infrastructure, like Fairbanks, Alaska;
Yellowknife, Canada; Svalbard, Norway; Abisko National Park, in Sweden; Rovaniemi,
Finland; and pretty much anywhere in Iceland.

The best time of year to see the northern lights is between September and April, when the
sky gets dark enough to see the aurora. (Far northern locales experience the midnight sun,
or 24 hours of daylight in the summer.) The most action usually happens between 9 p.m. and
3 a.m., according to the Geophysical Institute of the University of Alaska Fairbanks(opens in
new tab). Keep the moon phases in mind, as a bright full moon might fill the night sky with
light. Check local weather forecasts as well, because you won't be able to spot the aurora
through the clouds.

You can also monitor aurora forecasts from the University of Alaska Fairbanks' Geophysical
Institute(opens in new tab) and NOAA, which offers both three-day(opens in new tab) and
30-minute forecasts(opens in new tab).