Northern Lights Shine Bright Over North Dakota

It is one of those sights that many think is only obtainable if they travel to the northern parts of the planet. An aurora, sometimes referred to as polar lights, northern lights or southern lights, is a natural light display in the Earth's sky, predominantly seen in the high-latitude regions. But in recent years the gorgeous Aurora Borealis can also be seen in some remote parts of continental US.

Zach Hargrove, from Live Storms Media, captured absolutely stunning shots of the nothern lights over North Dakota.

Here’s a little science for you. Auroras are produced when the magnetosphere is sufficiently disturbed by the solar wind that the trajectories of charged particles in both solar wind and magnetospheric plasma, mainly in the form of electrons and protons, precipitate them into the upper atmosphere due to Earth's magnetic field, where their energy is lost. The resulting ionization and excitation of atmospheric constituents emits light of varying color and complexity.

That is why the Aurora shows different colors in different parts of the world. In the northern countries, it may show varying shades of blue, purple and green. Lower, it shows only the green spectrum.

In northern latitudes, the effect is known as the aurora borealis or the northern lights. The southern counterpart, the aurora australis or the southern lights, has features almost identical to the aurora borealis and changes simultaneously with changes in the northern auroral zone. The Aurora Australis is visible from high southern latitudes in Antarctica, Chile, Argentina, New Zealand, and Australia.

Credit: Zachary Hargrove/Live Storms Media.