What Are the Northern Lights? — Aurora Guide

The Northern Lights are glowing curtains, spirals, and streaks of colour that appear in the night sky near the North Pole. (The South Pole has its own version — called Aurora Australis.)

The Sun constantly throws off a solar wind — a stream of tiny charged particles. When they reach Earth, our planet's magnetic field guides them toward the poles. There, they slam into oxygen and nitrogen atoms high in the atmosphere. Those collisions make the atoms glow — exactly like a neon sign.