Subscribe now

Log in

Your login is case sensitive

I have forgotten my password


Short Sharp Science: A New Scientist blog

Capturing the finest light show on the planet

Rowan Hooper, news editor


(Image: Arild Heitmann)

VIKING berserkers were said to have taken hallucinogenic mushrooms to help whip themselves into a frenzy before battle. They certainly wouldn't have needed them to see trippy light patterns in the sky.

In Earth's polar regions - such as here, in Nordland county, Norway - natural light shows occur when charged particles from space surge into the high atmosphere and collide with atoms. The result is the famous Northern Lights, or aurora borealis.

If the light is red, you know nitrogen atoms have been zapped. But usually the light is green, which means oxygen atoms 80 kilometres above ground are emitting photons as they calm down from their excited state.

"This is a special shot for me," says photographer Arild Heitmann, "since it captures the intense feeling of standing deep in the mountains, far away from light pollution, watching the finest light show on the planet." The shot won Heitmann runner-up prize in this year's Royal Observatory Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition (see other winning photos in "Best of the Astronomy Photographer of the Year contest").

People living in temperate regions don't often get to see the show. But when there is particularly violent solar activity, the oval zone of the aurora enlarges until it can be seen at lower latitudes. In 1859 - not quite coinciding with the publication later that year of On the Origin of Species - there was a massive solar flare that was seen around the world. The New York Times reported that the subsequent aurora was "so brilliant that at about one o'clock ordinary print could be read by the light".

It was caused by a huge coronal mass ejection, when solar wind and particles burst from the surface of the sun. We are not alone in experiencing the results of solar storms: Jupiter and Saturn, both with magnetic fields much stronger than Earth's, have their own magnificent auroras.

Facebook iconDigg iconDelicious iconStumbleUpon iconTwitter iconTechnorati iconReddit iconAddThis icon
Subscribe to New Scientist Magazine

1 Comment

Um, didnt the Met Office come up with a new computational model, that showed as the stratosphere warmed up, the ground got colder?

So, having this big Aurora energy injection, is going to make it a cold winter on the ground?

Good job the gas prices are coming down, pity the amount we pay for it wont.

Wonder how long it will be before multiple cameras viewing this phenomena, will be fed into supercomputers powerful enough to reverse track the particles creating the glow, and so recrete the complex magnetic fields that lead to it etc.

Twitter Follow us
Twitter updates
Recent comments


Your login is case sensitive

I have forgotten my password


© Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.