Northern & Southern lights

I jus got to know more about Northen and Southern Lights....What causes them? Northern lights originate from our sun. During large explosions and flares, huge quantities of solar particles are thrown out of the sun and into deep space. These plasma clouds travel through space with speeds varying from 300 to 1000 kilometers per second. But even with such speeds (over a million kilometer per hour), it takes these plasma clouds two to three days to reach our planet. When they are closing in on Earth, they are captured by Earth's magnetic field (the magnetosphere) and guided towards Earth's two magnetic poles; the geomagnetic south pole and the geomagnetic north pole.

On their way down towards the geomagnetic poles, the solar particles are stopped by Earth's atmosphere, which acts as an effective shield against these deadly particles. When the solar particles are stopped by the atmosphere, they collide with the atmospheric gases present, and the collision energy between the solar particle and the gas molecule is emitted as a photon - a light particle. And when you have many such collisions, you have an aurora - lights that may seem to move across the sky.

Why are there different colours ?

The lights is a result of the electrons exiting the gasses in the upper atmosphere. The colors is a result of the wavelength of the emitted photons. The yellow-green comes from oxygen, lower red color comes from nitrogen, while the upper red is from atomic oxygen.

I think this really amazed me…. How I wish I could really see it one day. I forgot which part of Australia u can really get to see it.