Traditional Culture Encyclopedia - Photography and portraiture - What color is the Northern Lights?

What color is the Northern Lights?

The colors of the Northern Lights are different. Most of them are green, white, yellow and blue. Occasionally, it will present a gorgeous red and purple, graceful and mysterious. Aurora can only be seen in cold autumn and winter nights and high latitudes. The best time is from 10 in the afternoon to 2 am, and sometimes it lasts about 1 hour.

Generally speaking, there are four types of aurora: arc aurora, ribbon aurora, curtain aurora and radial aurora. What appears in the north is called the Northern Lights, and what appears in the south is called the Southern Lights.

Aurora is essentially an optical phenomenon excited by the operation of atoms and molecules in the uppermost layer of the earth's atmosphere (above the ground 100-200 km). It is formed by three elements: solar wind, earth's magnetic field and atmosphere. The so-called "solar wind" is an energy that the sun constantly radiates to the universe. It consists of electrons and protons. Due to the intense activity of the sun, countless charged particles are emitted. When charged particles flow to the earth and enter the range of the earth's magnetic field, they will enter the upper atmosphere near the north and south magnetic poles at high speed along the earth's magnetic field lines, and collide with particles such as oxygen atoms and nitrogen molecules, resulting in "electromagnetic storms" and "visible light" phenomena, which become a striking "aurora".