Research Paper On Aurora Borealis

Named for the Roman goddess of dawn, the aurora is a mysterious and unpredictable display of light in the night sky. The aurora borealis and aurora australis – often called the northern lights and southern lights – are common occurrences at high northern and southern latitudes, less frequent at mid-latitudes, and seldom seen near the equator. While usually a milky greenish color, auroras can also show red, blue, violet, pink, and white. These colors appear in a variety of continuously changing shapes. Sometimes the aurora is so dim and scattered as to be mistaken for clouds or the Milky Way; sometimes it is bright enough to read by. What does an aurora look like? Auroras can appear as long, narrow arcs of light, often extending east to west

When Columbus got here in 1492 when they were on the ship they had seen a light. They described it as a a small wax candle

When a beam of sunlight passes through a specially shaped glass object called a prism, the rays of different wavelengths are bent at different angles. The bending breaks up the sunlight into a beautiful band of colors. This band contains all the colors of the rainbow and is called the visible spectrum. At one end of the spectrum, the light appears as violet. It consists of the shortest wavelengths of light that we can see. Farther along the spectrum, the light has increasingly longer wavelengths. It appears as blue, green, yellow, orange, and red, each shading into its neighboring colors in the spectrum. The longest wavelengths of light that we can see appear deep red in color. Some descriptions of the spectrum also mention the color indigo, which is closely related to blue, between violet and blue.

While some say the event can only be observed during clear weather, the night I saw the lights it was fairly cool, misting rain and very foggy. It was quite amazing to see. We had been sitting at Wisemans View for almost 4 hours and had almost given up when a faint glow appeared on the side of the mountain. We watched it move slowly down the mountain then a second light appeared. They both descended down until reaching the river at the bottom. The lights disappeared completely and after a few seconds reappeared on the other side of the river. The hairs on my arms and on the back of my neck stood up. We continued to watch the pair of lights move along the ridge until they just

“Those colors are from sulfur and iron oxide mainly,” Norval said, revealing more of his encyclopedic knowledge of Gnaritus’ geology. “There are many colorful rainbows on Gnaritus not only in the sky but also on the land!”

If you’re looking to see the majestic northern lights, you’ll need to wait until those long, sunny summer nights have come to an end, and Alaska’s cool, star-filled nights have set in, making September a good time to cruise to

The best place to see the Northern Lights is actually Canada or the Yukon, other common places are the Nunavut and Alaska. [northernlightscentre.ca] We call these fascinating lights the Northern Lights/ Aurora Borealis up in the north, but in the south it's called the Aurora Australis. [northernlightscentre.ca] "In the south there are the southern lights which are only seen in Antarctica and the surrounding ocean." [Truls Lynne Hansen] The aurora stays above the clouds so we would need clear skies to see them. [Truls Lynne Hansen] These lights are actually 93 miles away from the sun. [earthsky.org] Speaking if the sun, does it affect the way nitrogen and hydrogen

“About 300 years ago, Sir Isaac Newton saw beam of sunlight through a glass prism. He discovered that light is made up of a spectrum of seven distinct visible colors” (University of Manitoba). Thus known as red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet, or roygbiv. These colors come about when electrons jump down from a higher energy level. To do this, a specific amount of energy is absorbed by an specific atom, causing its electrons to jump from ground state to higher energy levels.

During this unit in my astronomy class, one thing that I found fascinating was sunspots. A sunspot is basically a patch that occasionally occurs on the surface of the sun, and appears darker by contrasting with it’s surroundings. Human’s have known about sunspots for a quite a while now, even all the way back to the fifth century B.C., when the Chinese were able to observe dark areas on the sun. However, it wasn’t until the year 1610 when there was a real break through. Four men, all of which no one is particularly certain who observed sunspots first, were able to see these blemishes on the sun through telescopes. These men were Galileo Galilei, Johannes Fabricius, Christopher Scheiner, and Thomas Harriott. All through their own independent studies, they recorded the changing shapes and locations of sunspots. Further advancement for study on sunspots began in 1749, when scientists began daily observations in several observatories. Continuous observation began in the year 1849.

People accustomed to reading text hundreds or even thousands of years old can now read new material that is reality based. This auroral message gives new insight into the origin of life and the purpose of their existence.

Skywatcher Shawn Malone took this photo of the aurora March 15-16, 2012. She writes: "[A]urora activity picking up casts a bright reflection off of Lake Superior, Marquette, MI."

For this essay, I chose the constellation Corona Borealis. It was one of 48 constellations listed by Ptolemy, an astronomer of the second century. Its Latin name is translated as “Northern Crown”, due to its crown-like shape. The brightest star in the constellation is Alpha Coronae Borealis, and is a magnitude 2.2 star. Other notable stars in the constellation include R Coronae Borealis, a yellow supergiant, and T Coronae Borealis, also known as the Blaze Star, which is a recurrent supernova. Corona Borealis covers 179 square degrees (0.433% of the sky), placing it 73rd in size of the 88 recognized constellations. It is positioned in the Northern Celestial Hemisphere, and is surrounded by Hercules (to the east), Boötes (to the north),

Saturn gets its color and stripes from different atmospheric gases. Its beige color comes from yellow ammonia crystals in the upper atmosphere.

The Northern Lights is a glowing demonstration of Earth’s magnetic field communicating with charged particles from the sun. The zone runs around the Northern Coast of Siberia, Scandinavia, Iceland, the Southern tip of Greenland, Northern Canada and Alaska. The scientific name for them is Aurora Borealis. But, how do the Northern Lights appear?

The concepts that relate to the evidence and support my claim are taking notes and using the sunspots graph. The best time to see the aurora borealis are April through August.