Aurora Aurora An aurora (plural: auroras or aurorae), sometimes referred to as polar lights, northern lights (aurora borealis) or southern lights (aurora australis), is a natural light display in the Earth's sky, predominantly seen in the high-latitude regions (around the Arctic and Antarctic). Auroras are produced when the magnetosphere is sufficiently disturbed by the solar wind that the trajectories of charged particles in both solar wind and magnetospheric plasma, mainly in the form of electrons and protons, precipitate them into the upper atmosphere (thermosphere/exosphere) due to Earth's magnetic field, where their energy is lost. The resulting ionization and excitation of atmospheric
Aurora explanations: that the ocean was surrounded by vast fires; that the sun flares could reach around the world to its night side; or that [[glacier]]s could store energy so that they eventually became [[Fluorescence|fluorescent]]. In the 1740s [Benjamin Franklin] theorized in his paper "Aurora Borealis, Suppositions and Conjectures towards forming an Hypothesis for its Explanation" that an aurora was caused by a concentration of electrical charge in the polar regions intensified by the snow and moisture in the air: Observations of the rhythmic movement of compass needles due to the influence of an aurora were confirmed in the Swedish city