What the heck is the Aurora Borealis?

This incredible kaleidoscope of colors in the night sky are known as the Aurora borealis, or the northern lights, and what’s going on here is pretty wild.
Our sun is a massive ball of hot plasma, fueled by nuclear fusion reactions occurring at its core, and part of this reaction sends out charged particles from it’s corona, or upper atmosphere, creating a solar wind. So in addition to the light and heat we feel from the sun, our planet is constantly being bombarded by these charged particles - but thankfully our planet has two things that protect us.
The first is an atmosphere, or a layer of gases held close by gravity which insulates our planet from the depths of space, and the second are the poles. Our planet contains a lot of metals at its core, which gives us the North and South Pole, or magnetized regions on earth that are concentrated around the axis of which our planet rotates.
Since our planet is spherical shaped, when these particles hit earth they are pulled by that magnetic force north and south towards the poles where they interact with different gas molecules in our atmosphere. Similar to a neon light, when these electrically charged particles interact with different gases they glow different colors. Red hues are created by these charged particles interacting with Nitrogen, the green hues are created by Oxygen, and a variety of other gases mixing create the variations of blues and purples you may also see.
It’s a truly incredible thing happening on a solar system-wide scale that we’re so fortunate to be able to witness, and just a gorgeous little reminder to all of us all that this planet we share is truly unique in our place within the galaxy, so we’d better do all we can to take care of it, so that we can continue to enjoy incredible light shows like this.
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Produced & Directed by Ross Reid
~ I'd like to acknowledge that this video was filmed on the traditional, ancestral and unceded territory of the Coast Salish peoples-Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, Stó:lō and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh and xʷməθkʷəy̓əm Nations. ~
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