Why do the colors of the northern lights change?
(FOX40.COM) — Residents in lower latitudes across the world were able to get a rare sighting of the northern lights on recent nights, which featured an array of colors across the night skies.
The colors of the aurora borealis are usually green but could appear as other colors including red, blue, pink and purple, according to which compounds from the sun are interacting with compounds on Earth and how high up this is happening in the atmosphere, according to the NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center.
People across the world captured the astronomical light show as the lights began appearing starting on Friday night and continuing through the weekend.
The aurora borealis, as the lights are also called, were caused by a rare G5 solar storm, which hasn’t occurred since October 2003.
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The different aurora colors
The color of the aurora is determined by altitude and atmospheric compounds, according to the NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center.
Nitrogen and oxygen are atmospheric compounds that help determine the color and could be found in different altitudes, the NOAA said.
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“When charged particles from the sun enter our atmosphere, they interact with those compounds, and the aurora is the visible result,” NOAA officials said in a Facebook post. “Depending on which compounds are being excited by the Sun’s charged particles, different colors will result.”
The colors that appear are the result of whether it is oxygen or nitrogen and how much of the sun’s particles are interacting with these at once, according to NOAA.
The greenish-yellow light is the most familiar color of the aurora and it comes from oxygen, which also emits red light. Nitrogen typically generates a blue light.
Molecules from oxygen and nitrogen can give off an ultraviolent light, which can only be detected by special cameras on satellites, NOAA said.
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