Northern Lights on the Plains

There's another celestial spectacle that shows up better in the countryside. It's the aurora, often called the Northern Lights or aurora borealis in the Northern Hemisphere. But there are many misconceptions about auroras. First, auroras are not seen only in the north. A good aurora will spread across the sky and reach south to Nebraska and beyond. That's what happened last November and again in May when auroras were visible across much of the state. And, for those who live in the Southern Hemisphere, there are the Southern Lights, or aurora australis.

Huge magnetic storms on the Sun, covering thousands and thousands of miles, create auroras on Earth. These eruptions propel streams of highly charged particles, or ions, into space. When these waves of ions reach the edge of the Earth's magnetic field, some particles are pulled into the Earth's atmosphere along the lines of magnetic forces toward the poles.

Looking south at the U.S. Highway 30 bridge corssing the Missouri River, the green glow of the auroa on November 8, 2004, appears above the span.

As these charged particles collide with gases in the atmosphere, they start to glow, producing an aurora with colors of red, green, blue and violet. These showers of ions are so charged with electricity they can interrupt radio and television signals.

An aurora appears as moving clouds or sometimes fingers of light that are constantly moving because of the changing interaction between the solar stream and the Earth's magnetic field.

For centuries, people have been excited when they see an aurora, but until recently they could not know what it was. Some had believed these events were reflections of sunlight from the Earth's polar caps. Today, we know that whenever there are big solar storms, an aurora might be visible a day or so later. Auroras are not seasonal. Big eruptions on the sun are unpredictable, but there appears to be a slightly better chance of seeing auroras in October and April because of the alignment of the Earth's magnetic field.

At about 1:50 in the morning, the November auorora peaks as low clouds stretch across the northern horizon.

Because an aurora's glow is often not bright, light pollution in cities obscures the phenomenon from many people. If you see an aurora in the dark countryside and then drive into a city, you might still see the aurora faintly through the glare of light needlessly escaping upward.