People across the UK, from the Shetland Islands to Somerset and from Norfolk to Northern Ireland, have been treated to a stunning display of the aurora borealis or northern lights recently. But what causes this beautiful phenomena and why has it appeared so far south?
For thousands of years, people associated the ghostly northern lights with the world of restless spirits. But over the last century, science has revealed that aurorae originate in the area surrounding our planet. The near-Earth region of space is known as the magnetosphere. It is a cocktail of atoms and molecules from the Earth’s upper atmosphere, shattered and heated by solar radiation (electromagnetic radiation emitted by the Sun).
