Northern Lights
Ringing Under the Northern Lights - Day 47 - Daily Content Challenge
My fridge magnet today shows one I bought while on my trip to Finland to play in an International Handbell Festival called Ringing Under the Northern Lights.
I joined ringers from around the world and we held handbell concerts in Finland and Estonia - two northern countries where one can often see the Northern Lights dancing in the sky.
What are the Northern Lights? They are actually charged particles ejecting from the sun that create a solar wind. When the wind slams into the Earth’s upper atmosphere an aurora is born. In the Northern Hemisphere, it is called the aurora borealis, while in the Southern Hemisphere, it’s called the aurora australis.
These particles are deflected towards the poles of our planet by the Earth’s magnetic field and interact with our atmosphere. The energy that is deposited causes the atmosphere to give off light based on the chemical composition of the Earth’s atmosphere. Some of the dominant colors seen in the aurorae are red, a color produced by the nitrogen molecules, and green, a color produced by oxygen molecules in our atmosphere.
To see the Northern lights, the sky needs to be dark and clear. A good display may last no longer than 15-30 minutes at a time but it could extend to a couple of hours or longer. There have been reports of sightings this past month, but here in Lethbridge there have been too many clouds blocking our view of these dancing light displays.
Unfortunately, when I was in Finland, we did not see the Northern Lights either.
Have you ever seen the Northern Lights?
This is something I still have on my bucket list.
