The northern lights

Wow, pink and purple skies! I hope you’ve had a chance to see the northern lights. Let’s talk about this magnificent celestial show.

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A few resources:

A few resources:

What causes the northern lights?

Northern lights: what they are and how to see them

10 awesome aurora facts (from the Australian government)

Fire in the sky: the southern lights in Indigenous oral traditions

Hubble captures vivid auroras in Jupiter’s atmosphere (NASA)

Music: Jens East — Daybreak (ft. Henk) www.soundcloud.com/jenseast
Licence: Creative Commons Attribution V4.0

Transcription (remember, this is a direct transcription of what I said and is not actually how I write!):

Welcome to Nine Minutes of Wonder. I’m Betsy Hedberg. I hope this podcast will help you rekindle your sense of wonder for this awe-inspiring world. If you like what you hear in the next few minutes, please subscribe and share.

This weekend is an incredible phenomenon. I hope maybe you’ve had a chance to see it.

The northern lights. And I didn’t see it because I was so clueless about it. I’m really mad at myself, but I’m going to try again tonight, which will be Saturday night, the 11th of May 2024.

And I’m so excited about it after seeing all the photos and how pink and purple they are that I decided to do a quick episode about it today.

I’ll start by telling you a story. When I was about 12 years old, I went to an overnight camp in Northern Wisconsin and the camp was very forested, but of course we had some clearings. And we had to go to bed really early, like way before it even got dark, which always annoyed me, but that was the rule.

So one night we were in bed. Actually, I think I was probably younger than 12. It was probably like 11, but anyway, 10 or 11. But anyway, we were in our bunk beds one night in the middle of the night when it was dark, and the counselor came in and said, “Everybody get up and come out. You’ve got to see this!” So she took us up the hill a little bit to a clearing and said, “Look up, it’s the Northern Lights!”

And I looked up, and I had always wanted to see them. I had seen pictures of them, of course, and all the different greens and purples and pinks. And I looked up and I saw just some white lights up in the sky, like the sky. It wasn’t like the Milky Way. It was just sort of whitish and shimmering. And it was cool, but it was a little bit underwhelming compared to some of the pictures that I had seen, but it was really cool. And we were looking up there and we’re looking up at the lit sky. And then the camp counselor said, “You know, this is caused by the reflections of the ice from the North Pole onto the sky. And if you look really carefully, you can even see the penguins.” And I thought, “Oh my gosh, is she really that stupid?” But I had been trained not to, you know…I was really shy at that time and I wasn’t supposed to talk back to the teachers and the authority figures. I’m not like that anymore. But anyway, I didn’t say anything, even though I knew better.

So obviously there are multiple problems with what she said. I can’t believe she was teaching that to young kids, but I don’t think I need to remind you about the fallacy of what she said about the penguins. And then of course, the northern lights are not caused by reflections of ice from the North Pole. That’s ridiculous. And anyway, the North Pole is not a sheet of ice. So it’s the whole thing is ridiculous.

But let me talk a little bit about this phenomenon that we’re witnessing this weekend, the northern lights and the southern lights.

So the northern lights are the aurora borealis and the southern lights are the aurora australis. It happens when solar particles leave the sun and after a few days are captured in the earth’s magnetic field and directed toward the poles by the earth’s magnetic field. They slam into the earth’s atmosphere at really high speeds, 45 million miles per hour, or 72 million kilometers per hour.

And these solar particles collide with atoms and molecules in the earth’s atmosphere. And those atoms and molecules get what the scientists call “excited,” and they heat up and light up. This is even stronger during a geomagnetic storm like what we’re having now.

And, just as an aside, what’s a geomagnetic storm? It’s also called a magnetic storm. And Wikipedia says it’s “a temporary disturbance of the earth’s magnetosphere caused by a solar wind shockwave.” So it’s a lot of energy, extra energy coming from the sun.

And these different atoms and molecules create different colors. So the green, I didn’t know this until I looked it up today, but the green that we see in the aurora is characteristic of oxygen and the pink, purple, and blue are caused by nitrogen in the atmosphere. I also learned today that when you’re looking at the aurora, it’s about 80 miles above the surface of the earth, even if it looks closer, but it can go up to thousands of miles above the earth’s surface.

This happens all year round, not just in winter. We think of it as being a winter phenomenon, but think about it in the northern latitudes where it’s most likely to happen. That’s when you can see it, right? Because in the summertime in the far north, it doesn’t get dark.

So you see it in the winter. And of course, people in the past saw this too. And they had various explanations for these lights that came in the sky.

Apparently, there are some Cro-Magnon cave paintings dating from 30,000 BC that may indicate an Aurora. It can’t be proved, but this is a strong hypothesis. And the first definite recording of the northern lights was from 2600 BC in China.

The aboriginal Australians considered the aurora australis fires in the sky. And some of the aboriginal cultures saw them as bad omens from the spirit world that were predicting a disaster. But others saw them as fires from the sky spirits, or ghostly beings who spoke to the elders through the aurora lights.

So they weren’t necessarily bad, but they could be really bad omens. And the Maori from present-day New Zealand, according to something that I read, viewed the aurora australis, the southern lights, as campfires of the ancestors that were reflected in the sky. The ancestors had gone to live in a far southern land full of ice. And then their campfires were being reflected into the sky. And actually, that sounds a lot more plausible than what my camp counselor told me, right? Because at least in the southern hemisphere close to the South Pole and Antarctica, which is a big sheet of ice, a continent of ice, and I don’t believe they talked about the penguins in the sky, but you never know. Some indigenous North American cultures viewed the northern lights as dancing human spirits and not necessarily evil.

But others carried knives to ward off the evil spirits in the lights. So there was a variety of reactions to this extraordinary phenomenon that, of course, they didn’t explain scientifically, but explained in their own ways.

A couple other interesting things I’ll say about the aurora.

They can make sounds. I didn’t know that. Cracking, hissing, clapping, or like finger-snapping. But scientists don’t know why. There have been a lot of reports of that. So I don’t know.

If you go out tonight, listen and let me know if you hear any sounds. I had never thought about this before either, but there is an aurora phenomenon on other planets, and it has been captured by the Hubble telescope. I found this incredible, gorgeous photo from the Hubble Space Telescope of the northern lights of Jupiter, and I’ll post a link to that.

They’ve also found it on other planets. So if you are in North America, of course, you recently had an eclipse, another incredible astronomical phenomenon, and that we can plan for for years, right? The aurora can’t be planned for in the same way, but you can maximize your chances of seeing it by being farther north or south and close to the fall or spring equinoxes, apparently. And I actually haven’t had a chance to look up the reason for this, but apparently it has a tendency to be stronger during those times.

And of course, if you travel to see the aurora, you have to hope for clear skies. This is one of the reasons that I’ve always wanted to go like to northern Finland or Alaska or someplace and see the northern lights, and I haven’t done it because I’m afraid like I’m going to book this magnificent and expensive trip, and then it’s going to be cloudy the whole time. But maybe I’ll do it someday anyway.

I did see the northern lights one time from an airplane, and it was beautiful, shimmering green, and the pilot pointed it out, and I was so happy I was on the correct side of the plane. And I’m pretty sure that I had made the intention of sitting on the northern side of the plane. So if you’re going to fly at night, especially during a time when there is a solar storm, a magnetic storm, try to get a window seat on the side of the plane in the northern hemisphere, of course, the northern side of the plane so that you can see it.

Anyway, I hope I see it tonight. I hope you do too. If it’s already past, you know, tonight when you’re listening to this, stay tuned in the news and by the meteorological services of your country and go see it when you get a chance.

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