i know this sounds painfully stupid— but my native language isn’t english. when i looked up how they happen, i got a bunch of big words thrown at me and didn’t understand a single thing.
so, in light of recent events, how the hell does it happen? what causes this phenomenon????? surely there’s a less intense way of explaining it.
In: Planetary Science
Maybe you’re familiar with [fluorescent lamps](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluorescent_lamp)?
In a fluorescent lamp, electric energy is absorbed by the gas inside the lamp. Then the gas will release back part of this absorbed energy as photons — light that we can see. So basically a fluorescent lamp converts electricity into light, by absorbing excess energy then releasing photons in turn.
Auroras work in almost exactly the same way. Energetic particles from the sun get absorbed by gasses high up in the atmosphere, then this extra energy gets released again as photons (light) that we can see.
We have a mix of different gasses in the atmosphere (oxygen, nitrogen, etc.) and depending on the altitude the various gasses end up releasing light at different wavelengths — so we get reds, greens, yellows, etc.
The Earth’s magnetic field usually deflects particles from the sun towards the north & south poles; That’s why usually we can only see auroras near the poles. But sometimes, during times of intense solar activity or due to fluctuations of the Earth’s magnetic field, auroras can be seen far away from the polar regions.
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