Essay by alio240High School, 10th gradeA, February 2006

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What are auroras?

An aurora is a northern or southern light. These are ghostly lights that appear up in the sky of the earth. These are all towards the pole regions of the earth. In the north these auroras are called aurora borealis. In the south these auroras are called aurora australis. These occur from when from the magnetic field outside the earth's atmosphere. After this the solar winds hit the magnetic field which sends these auroras lights down to the earth's northern and southern poles.

What colors are auroras?

The color of an aurora just depends on the height at which most of these collisions happen in Street lamps and neon signs give out light depending on how much gas there is inside the subject. If these aurora lights are about 300 kilometers high they will probably be red. This is very unusual but can happen when there are solar winds to the maximum.

The most common colors are yellow and green. All of these lights are called by oxygen, but these are all at lower altitudes. Nitrogen at about 100 kilometers high produces red aurora lights.

Violent Explosions

These explosions very because the sun has a cycle from about to eleven years. The sun can sometimes throw out some things called coronal mass ejection or in easier terms CME. If these hit the earth there can be some massive auroras which can lead to massive impressions in the sky which every one just has too see. They can even be seen from England to the artic because they are so strong. But this rarely happens.

What Causes Auroras?

Auroras are caused by high energy particles from the solar wind that are trapped in the Earth's magnetic field. As these particles go back and forth along the...