Northern lights in northern Norway
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.
Featured on GeoLog, the official blog of the European Geosciences Union (opens in a new window)
Reuse
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0) (opens in a new window)Credit: Rita Nogherotto (distributed via imaggeo.egu.eu)
Properties
Type
Image
Format
JPG
Size
5.9 MB
Width
4110 px
Height
2800 px
Aspect
411:280
Brand
Fujifilm
Model
FinePix X100
Exposure
18 mm f/3.5 25 s ISO 400
Software
GIMP
Taken
27 September 2017
Coordinates
69.6312, 18.0309
Tint
Greenish black
Submitted
14 February 2018
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