Aurora Borealis
The aurora borealis, also called the northern polar lights, is an amazing and a fanciful natural phenomenon. Famous Norwegian Arctic explorer Fridtjof Nansen in his book “Farthest North” (1897) gives the following colourful description of the northern lights:
"...the aurora borealis shakes over the vault of heaven its veil of glittering silver - changing now to yellow, now to green, now to red. It spreads, it contracts again, in restless change, next it breaks into waving, many-folded bands of shining silver, over which shoot billows of glittering rays; and then the glory vanishes.
Presently it shimmers in tongues of flame over the very zenith; and then again it shoots a bright ray up from the horizon, until the whole melts away in the moonlight, and it is as though one heard the sigh of a departing spirit. Here and there are left a few waving streamers of light, vague as a foreboding - they are the dust from the aurora's glittering cloak. But now it is growing again; new lightnings shoot up; and the endless game begins afresh.
And all the time this utter stillness, impressive as the symphony of infinitude."
Aurora borealis is the result of the emissions of photons in the Earth's upper atmosphere which in fact is very thin (gas density there is low to the limit) resulting in atmosphere gradual replacement by the near-Earth space environment. The magnetosphere, positioned in the Earth's magnetic field, is considered to be a boundary area containing charged particles where complex physical processes take place under the influence of the solar wind, a flow of ions continuously flowing outward from the sun. Collisions between these ions and atmospheric atoms and molecules cause energy releases in the form of aurora borealis appearing around the poles. As a result we have an enchanting play of lights and colours, a scene that has no chance of being forgotten.
Aurora borealis is common near the both Poles (Northern and Southern hemisphere) where it is visible almost every day. Yet at Yakutsk latitude Aurora borealis can be spotted only during magnetic storms. It is best observed at periods of darkness and is visible to the naked eye.
(Courtesy of Bichik Publishing. Yakutia Amazing and Mysterious)
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