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What causes the Northern Lights?
An aurora is one of the most spectacular displays in the night sky – but how are these curtains of colourful light formed?
The aurora borealis, also known as the ‘northern lights’, is one of the most spectacular displays in the night sky. What is the science behind these curtains of light?
The sight filled the northern sky; the immensity of it was scarcely conceivable. As if from Heaven itself, great curtains of delicate light hung and trembled. Pale green and rose-pink, and as transparent as the most fragile fabric, and at the bottom edge a profound and fiery crimson like the fires of Hell, they swung and shimmered loosely with more grace than the most skilful dancer. Lyra thought she could even hear them: a vast distant whispering swish.
Phillip Pullman, His Dark Materials
What is the aurora?
The aurora can be seen near the poles of both the northern and southern hemisphere. In the north the display is known as the aurora borealis; in the south it is called the aurora australis.
These ‘northern’ and ‘southern lights’ have fascinated, frightened and inspired humans for centuries. More recently, photographers have gone to remarkable lengths to try and capture the beauty of these atmospheric events.
What causes the aurora borealis or ‘northern lights’?
The lights we see in the night sky are in actual fact caused by activity on the surface of the Sun.
Solar storms on our star’s surface give out huge clouds of electrically charged particles. These particles can travel millions of miles, and some may eventually collide with the Earth.
Most of these particles are deflected away, but some become captured in the Earth’s magnetic field, accelerating down towards the north and south poles into the atmosphere. This is why aurora activity is concentrated at the magnetic poles.
“These particles then slam into atoms and molecules in the Earth’s atmosphere and essentially heat them up,” explains Royal Observatory astronomer Tom Kerss. “We call this physical process ‘excitation’, but it’s very much like heating a gas and making it glow.”
What we are seeing therefore are atoms and molecules in our atmosphere colliding with particles from the Sun. The aurora’s characteristic wavy patterns and ‘curtains’ of light are caused by the lines of force in the Earth’s magnetic field.
The lowest part of an aurora is typically around 80 miles above the Earth’s surface. However, the top of a display may extend several thousand miles above the Earth.
Northern Lights Art Project
This craft looks really effective but it’s actually pretty simple to make using a water spray, like one that you might use on plants, to create the coloured rays of light.
As you’ll see in the images for this craft I’ve actually done this activity a couple of times so that I could see how using more or less water made a difference and you’ll find all my tips in the step by step instructions below as well as some ideas for how you could modify this activity for different ages.
If you haven’t looked at pictures of the northern lights before with your child then there’s a really good article on CBC Kids that explains all about what the northern lights are and has some really cool pictures of them too.
The article also talks about how no two northern lights patterns will look the same which I think is a great attitude to take into your art too – each one will be unique and you’ll have your own northern lights art that looks fantastic.
Materials Needed:
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- White paper or cardstock
- Washable pens
- Kitchen foil
- Water spray
- Black paper or construction paper
- White chalk
- Scissors
- Glue
- Pencil
First grab a piece of kitchen foil that is larger than your piece of white paper.
Colour in your foil using washable pens, you want to ink to run in this craft but likewise you don’t want it to permanently stain anything else it happens to touch (I totally got my hands and table) so this isn’t one for the Sharpies.
I’ve used bic washable pens for this particular activity but the crayola washable markers are also ones that I use a lot .
I’ve tried to use colours which match in with the same one that you might see in the Northern Lights themselves so obviously different shades of blue as well as greens and purples.
This is a really good excuse to look at some pictures of the lights with your child and see what shades they notice.
One of the nice things about this activity is that you really do need to scribble over the foil a lot, you want as much of it covered as is possible to reduce your chances of white patches on your art. For this reason I think it’s pretty accessible to younger kids who are pretty much experts at scribbling!
Hold your paper or cardstock carefully above your coloured in area to make sure that you’ve coloured enough foil to cover your paper.
Next you need to grab your spray bottle, this should be filled with some water. You can buy spray bottles online if you don’t already have one but it’s worth having a look around the house for ones you can safely repurpose too – mine used to be for a skin toner.
Spray your water all over your foil. I’ve used less water in the landscape picture and as you might be able to see in the final image the colours don’t look quite so fluid, you can see a bit of the colouring lines that have copied over.
In the vertical craft the colours have blended a lot more as the pen ink becomes watercolors, however you might be able to notice a bit of a drip down one side from there being so much water and ink. There was also more ink left over in the foil afterwards so it made this potentially more messy.
Ultimately how much you spray your colouring is a bit hit or miss but I think that one of the nice things about this craft too is that you don’t know exactly how it will turn out, much like the Norther Lights themselves.
Place your paper or cardstock down on the wet foil, run the back of the paper to ensure that it all gets covered wit the wet ink and then lift the paper back up.
If you do make your art and then decide you want you colours a bit more liquidy you could always give the foil a bit more of a spray in that area and then pop your paper down again but do be mindful that this might cause the different colours to overlay on your paper. Your call.
Put your paper aside and let’s get started on the mountain range, this part can be adapted if you like, see the suggestions below.
Make sure that your black construction paper or cardstock is the same width as your paper and then using a pencil draw your mountain range and cut it out.
If you can see pencil marks then just turn the paper over. You could of course just cut the shapes out freehand but I found this way less stressful.
Using a white piece of chalk, colour in the tops of the mountains to create your snowy mountains and then blow away any excess dust.
If you don’t have any chalk then a white pastel or chalk pen should also work. Once your paper is dry you can then glue this on to the bottom of the page.
Ideas For Adapting This Activity
If cutting out one long mountain shape for the bottom of your art is a bit tricky for your child why not get them to do individual triangle shapes and layer these onto the bottom of your page instead. These would require only straight cuts into the paper so would be much easier for younger kids starting to use scissors.
I’ve used black construction paper to make the outline of my mountains but you could change this to green paper and do tree shapes instead. Green paper is often easier to find especially if you have any scrap paper or you could even have a look through old magazines for bits to cut out. Again this would be good to make use using triangle shapes for your trees.
Instead of drawing a mountain range or group of trees your could just do a black strip for the ground and maybe cut out a tree shape to go at the side, a Christmas tree shape might look nice.
