Northern lights in northern Norway
by Rita Nogherotto, International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP ), Trieste, Italy
Northern lights in Tromsø, displaying the collisions between electrically charged particles from the sun which penetrate the earth's magnetic shield and strike atoms and molecules in our atmosphere. Collisions excite the atoms causing electrons to move to higher-energy orbits, further away from the nucleus. When electrons move back to lower-energy orbits, they release particles of light called photons which form the aurora. The green color is produced by collisions with oxygen, purple colors are produced by collisions with nitrogen.
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Categories
- Atmospheric Sciences (874)
- Planetary and Solar System Sciences (132)
- Solar-Terrestrial Sciences (87)
Location
- Europe (3778)
- Northern Europe (905)
- Norway (159)
- Exact location (18.0309 E, 69.6312 N)
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Image properties
4110 × 2800 px;
image/jpeg; 5.9 MB
Camera:
Fujifilm FinePix X100
Software: GIMP
Taken on 27
September
2017
Submitted on 14 February 2018
Licence
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)
Credit
Rita Nogherotto (distributed via imaggeo.egu.eu)
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