AURORA
Volume 1, Issue 1
May-2015
Aurora : The dawn
To the dispassionate, objective viewer auroras can
appear as colorful, wispy
curtains of light ruffling in
the night sky+ But legend
and lore across the ages
and around th world tell of
more in the heavens than
just a brilliant, ghostly light
show+ In folklore from China and Europe describes
auroras as great dragons or
serpents in the skies+ In
Scandinavia, Iceland, and
Greenland, an aurora was
often seen as the great
bridge Bifrost, The burning
archway by which the gods
traveled from heaven to
Earth+ Some Native American tribes pictured spirits
carrying lanterns as they
sought the souls of dead
hunters,
called the northern lights
and southern lights which
are common occurrences
at high northern and southern latitudes, less frequent
at mid-latitudes, and seldom seen near the equator+
Before telegraphs and telephones, rockets and radio,
people were not affected
by auroras+ Solar activity
and the resulting aurora
light shows were curiosities
of nature+ But then humans
started to harness the power of electromagnetism,
developing networks of
electrical power and communications systems+ It
was soon learned that the
aurora could affect those
systems+ Then the humans
While Aurora is named af- started looking into these
ter the Roman goddess of mysterious display of lights
dawn; the aurora is a mys- to determine the cause
terious and unpredictable and behavior of this natural
display of light in the night- phenomenon+
sky+ The aurora borealis
and aurora australis – often
The typical aurora is
caused by collisions
between fast-moving
electrons from space
with the oxygen and
nitrogen in Earth’s upper atmosphere+ The
electrons, which come
from the Earth’s magnetosphere, the region
of space controlled by
Space shuttle photo of an aurora over the
South pole
Aurora Borealis captured by a
photographer .
Earth’s magnetic field transfer their energy to the oxygen and nitrogen atoms and
molecules, making them
excited+ As the gases return
to their normal state, they
emit photons, small bursts
of energy in the form of
“
Before
telegraphs and
telephones,
rockets and
radio, people
were not
affected by
Auroras