The Science Behind the Artistic Northern Lights

We all must have heard about the stunning beauty of the Northern Lights. Perhaps, it is on everyone’s travel list. Also known as Polar Lights, these natural light waves in the sky are considered among the most unique natural phenomena across the globe. But what creates these spectacular waves of light? Is it just nature's artistic creation or science or both? Let’s delve deeper to understand what is behind it.

The formation of the Northern Lights is because of the collision of highly charged sun particles with the neutral atoms of different gases like oxygen, nitrogen etc, that are present in the earth’s atmosphere. During the collision, energy transfers between the charged solar wind particles and neutral gas particles which leads to the emission of a large amount of energy in the form of light waves. This occurrence looks like a wave of light in the upper atmosphere of the earth.

Picture credits: Pixabay

From glowing greens to mesmerising purple, occasionally yellow to bright pinks, Northern Lights are the beams of light that float over the arctic skies in winter. Artistically, the sky looks like nature’s canvas painted in beautiful colours. However, there is a deep scientific explanation behind the occurrence of different colours as well.

The colour of the light waves depends on the type of gas that the solar wind collides with. The most common colour of Northern lights is green which is typically caused due to oxygen. Whereas the deep red hues and blue colour is due to the collision between nitrogen molecules and sun particles.

Moreover, the different colours are also a result of the altitude at which these lights occur. Such as the green colour appears about 100-200 km above the surface of the earth. Similarly, the violet and blue colours can be seen approximately 100 km higher than the ground and the red colours appear above 250 km.

So, whether it is the sky or sea, earth, or universe, every phenomenon around us is backed by science or art. That is why the complex concepts of science look simpler and become easily understandable through art. Northern Lights is just one SciArt phenomenon. There are ample other SciArt wonders around us waiting to be explored.