Think of the bursts of shimmering green, pink and yellow as the result of solar winds tickling our planet’s magnetosphere. (Of course, it’s a little more complicated than that.)
Here’s what causes the Northern Lights.
It begins with the sun, which emits a plasma that travels out in all directions of our solar system. When this solar wind—basically a blast of charged particles—reaches Earth, it interacts with our magnetic field and concentrates over a narrow band called the auroral oval, which circles more than 100 kilometres above our planet. Here, this army of charged particles excites atoms in the outer atmosphere to produce the otherworldly light show we see. Oxygen gives off a green glow. Nitrogen lights up pink.
Since Yellowknife and the Northwest Territories sit directly underneath the auroral oval, they experience the Northern Lights more than 200 times each year. Every so often, a big solar storm ejects a huge mass of charged particles and these solar winds result in especially vibrant, vivid and mesmerizing Aurora.
The Northern Lights are such a big deal in the Northwest Territories, that we even have Aurora forecasters who monitor solar activity to predict how intense the lights will be on any given evening.
You could say the Northwest Territories has got the Northern Lights down to a science.
