Saturday Night we were treated to a special natural phenomenon that is rarely seen this far south (or north) of the polar regions.  In the northern hemisphere it's call the Aurora Boealis, or Northern Lights.  Our first gance of the northern lights came at around 9pm through a clearing in the trees.  It appeared as a large dim red area in the northern sky.   We soon gathered around the camp fire in a larger open area where we were treated to a 2 hour light show full of a glowing horizon, jets of light shooting vertically into the sky and migrating colors of deep red and greenish white.  No one was equiped with a low light camera so we we not able to get any photos ourselves but these borrowed photos are very similar to what we saw.
    

What is the Northern Lights?

The Northern Lights, or Aurora Borealis as some call it, is the natures own gigantic light-show. This special light phenomenon can be seen on the northern and southern hemisphere (Northern Lights and Southern Lights respectively) if circumstances are right.

Extremely simplified, they say that the Northern Lights occurs when the particles from the sun are being thrown against the earth by the solar wind. When the particles collide with the earths atmosphere, the energy of the particles are turned into light, the Northern Light.

This is a a better explanation, but still very simplified:

In order to be able to study the cause of the Northern Lights, you must concentrate on processes that occur on the sun; The sun has a number of holes in its corona from which high energy particles stream out with enormous velocity. These particles are thrown out through our solar system, and the phenomena is called solar wind. Some of this solar wind meets the earths magneto sphere, compressing it on the daylight side, while drawing it out in a tail on In order to be able to study the cause of the Northern Lights, you must concentrate on processes that occur on the sun; The sun has a number of holes in its corona from which high energy particles stream out with enormous velocity. These particles are thrown out through our solar system, and the phenomena is called solar wind. the nighttime side. From out in the magnetic the solar wind particles are accelerated down to the earth again along the open magnetic field lines. The field lines are open only in the polar regions. At lower latitudes the field is locked. Thats why we have the Northern Lights only in the polar regions. When the solar wind particles collide with the air molecules, their energy is transferred into light. It is billions of such processes occurring simultaneously that produces the Northern Lights.

For more information on the Northern Lights, here are a few links to follow: