Light 07: The Aurora Borealis

By Circe -

Welcome to the 2023 Advent Calendar, which this year is just a list of things that light up all pretty. Previous entries are here. If you enjoy this and want to encourage me to bang more things out on a keyboard, consider supporting my Patreon, or sending something off of my Christmas list. If you'd rather support my spoiled pets, their Ratmas list is here. If you want to spend money but not on me, you can direct your donations to Mainely Rat Rescue, who handles rescue and foster operations for rats, mice, gerbils, guinea pigs, and other small mammals in the New England area, or the MSPCA, where my critters got their medical care before I found a good exotics vet, and where I picked up Koda and Yogi. 

Enjoy your trip through the cavalcade of things that go blinky-blink in the dark!

An explorer rat, in arctic parka, watching the aurora borealis in a snowy landscape.
The aurora borealis, or Northern Lights, are an atmospheric phenomenon that result from the interaction of the solar winds with the Earth's magnetosphere. Gusts of plasma ejected from the sun jostle the shell of charged particles around our planet, knocking some of them into the upper atmosphere. They collide in turn with gas molecules, and pass on enough energy to make those gases glow. Different gases emit different colors, but the one most likely to filter through the rest of the atmosphere unscathed is the ghostly green of oxygen, sometimes with a scarlet fringe.

Typically aurorae (borealis, or the southern counterpart, australis) are only visible if you're near the poles, but with increased solar activity the viewing area widens. On occasion they've been observed as far south as I am, at about 42° N. We were actually predicted to maybe possibly see them if we could find a dark enough viewing spot this year, about a week ago, but sadly, I live in the brightly-lit metro area, and saw nothing.

The indigenous people have known about the Northern Lights approximately forever, but the earliest modern scientific observations I know of were undertaken by the University of Saskatchewan, with some creative post-WWII repurposing of long-distance radar arrays. They're still at it today, as far as I know, as part of the international SuperDARN program, which does useful things despite the hilarious name.

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