The lure of the northern lights

What could be more beautiful on a cold winter’s night than catching a glimpse of the northern lights dancing across the sky? This stunning phenomenon, one of the wonders of the natural world, is embedded in the mythology of many northern cultures. We now know that these ethereal lights, aka the aurora borealis, are caused by atomic particles from the Sun hitting the Earth’s upper atmosphere and making it glow. As solar activity rises towards its next maximum, the number of aurorae and their intensity is on the rise. This talk will explain when best to look, what you can expect to see, and how to observe and photograph them, with a look at some of the myths associated with the aurora and the pioneering work of Norwegian scientists in understanding their causes. The talk will be illustrated with spectacular images and video clips, many from amateurs.

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Credit: Norwegian Space Centre

About Paal Brekke

Paal Brekke is a solar physicist at the Norwegian Space Centre in Oslo. He obtained his PhD from the University of Oslo in 1993 on the ultraviolet emissions from the Sun. From 1999 he was the European Space Agency’s deputy project scientist for the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. He is now a delegate to the ESA Science Programme Committee and the International Living With a Star programme. His book Our Explosive Sun has just been published by Springer.

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