When Science Meets Nature

Last weekend saw the skies around the UK light up with the beautiful display of the aurora borealis; an array of colours decorated the sky in a rare sighting (once every 20 years!).

What is the aurora?

The aurora is usually visible only in the north and south poles. The north pole display is the aurora borealis, and the south pole is the aurora australis. The display that we enjoyed over the weekend originated from the surface of the sun. As the surface of the sun becomes more active, it releases clouds of electrically charged particles which travel millions of miles; some of these particles might even collide with Earth. Most of the particles are deflected away, but some are captured by the Earth’s magnetic field, accelerating down towards the north and south poles. This is why they are mostly present at the poles.

What did we see at the weekend?

When the particles reached the skies around Essex, Norfolk and London, we saw the bright colours caused by nitrogen (purple, blue or pink) and oxygen (green) interacting with the particles from the sun.

The lines are caused by the force in the Earth’s magnetic field. This geomagnetic storm and the higher levels of ‘coronal mass ejections – seen in the image above – allowed the display to reach us here. We have received some lovely images from some very excited member of the school community. Thank you all for your images, it was lovely to see them.