Tammy Mitchell Hines & Co. House to Home Newspaper Apr. 2014 Edition | Page 5

Aurora Borealis:

by Kerri Westenberg

T

he northern lights rise
like glowing pillars and
then unfurl to stretch
across the night sky. They wave
like a flag, shimmering green
with purple at the fringes,
below a tapestry of stars.
Sometimes they transform
nearly the whole sky into their
dance floor, flitting north and
south in hues from blue to
yellow and even pink and red.
The beauty is astounding; it’s
almost surreal.
Or so I’ve been told.
I have never seen the
celebrated, iconic aurora
borealis streaming ribbons of
color. Though I have lived
in Minnesota most of my life
and take several trips north
each year, the vision I consider
almost a birthright has
eluded me. I expect that will
change soon. Tired of friends
marveling at their sighting
and of being relegated myself
to viewings via photographs,
I made a plan to increase
my odds that includes trips
to points north and weather
forecasts—on both the sun

and the Earth.
Good thing I decided to
get serious in my search this
year. The aurora borealis—and
its southern counterpart, the
aurora australis—starts when
the sun has a solar flare or
coronal mass ejection and
hurls charged particles across
the heavens. Given the right
trajectory, those particles can
get trapped by Earth’s magnetic
field and collide with gases in
the upper atmosphere as they
zoom toward the poles. It’s
such energetic collisions that
give the night sky its luminous
glow. The sun has its own
cycles, akin to our seasons, and
is currently in the midst of
heightened solar flare activity.
Another such period won’t
return for nine to 14 years.
Nonscientific translation:
This is the year of aurora
borealis. I hope.
Seeing the northern lights
can be a tricky thing. Particle
storms from solar flares take
48 hours to arrive at our
humble place in the universe.
There are some 90 million
miles between the sun and the
Earth, affording opportunities

for the storms to lose energy
or veer off course. Even if they
stay on track, they can arrive
during daylight hours, when
the high-energy, high-altitude
show carries on unseen by
human eyes. Or a storm can
arrive at night, only to hav H]›