Those swirling colors in the night sky, like green and pink mixing around, always make me wonder what is really happening way up there. People have told stories about it for ages, calling it the northern lights or aurora borealis, thinking it was some kind of magic or gods getting upset. But actually, it comes from the sun, nothing mystical.

The sun keeps sending out these tiny bits of itself all the time, charged particles like electrons and protons rushing through space in what they call the solar wind. It goes for millions of miles until it hits Earths magnetic field, which sort of protects us by pushing most of it aside. Still, around the poles, north and south, the field gets weaker, so some particles slip through and head down into the atmosphere along those lines.

When they crash into gases up there, oxygen and nitrogen mostly, it excites the molecules, and they give off light as they calm down. Kind of like how a neon sign works, I guess. Oxygen higher up makes red, but closer to us it is green, that bright shade you see a lot. Then nitrogen does the blues and purples. All powered by the sun, even though it is ninety three million miles away, which seems crazy.

To catch a glimpse, you have to go pretty far north, places like Alaska or Iceland, or even Scandinavia, away from all the city lights that mess things up. Same for the south, I suppose, though I have not thought much about that. It happens best from late August through early April, when nights are long and dark. Clear skies are a must, clouds block everything no matter what. And it gets stronger around equinoxes, like September or March, when the solar wind angles in better.

Solar activity matters too. The sun has this eleven year cycle, peaking with more sunspots and flares at solar maximum, which ramps up the wind and makes the lights brighter and more often. We are getting close to one now, so maybe the next couple years will be good for seeing it if you plan ahead.

That green curtain rippling overhead, it shows how Earth and the sun are always connected, particles dancing with magnetic fields. I think it is sort of neat, the solar wind basically greeting our atmosphere like that. Not sure if I explained the colors right, but yeah.