What are the northern lights?

Hello,

There are a myriad of web sites explaining the northern lights that have
been collected by the Yahoo! server. The address of their site catalogue is:
http://dir.yahoo.com/Science/Earth_Sciences/Geology_and_Geophysics/Northern_Lights/

In short, the northern lights, or aurora, are caused when energetic
particles from space smash into Earth's atmosphere around Earth's
magnetic poles. From northern places (like Alaska, Iceland, Scandanavia
and Russia), the aurora are visible very often - sometimes almost every
night. Further south, the aurora are visible only when a giant storm of
particles from the sun smash into the Earth.

Thanks for writing!

Sincerely,
Kurtis Williams

Back to the Ask An Astronomer page.