RECENT EVENTS & ADVENTURES

• The above imagery of the sun's disc (approx 109 earths wide) was taken on Aug 1, 2010 during a coronal mass ejection (CME).
• A CME is a series of large exposions on the sun's surface which throw out massive amounts of charged particles at the Earth.
• It took about 3 days for those particles to travel to Earth.
• When the charged particles began to collide with Earth's magnetosphere, they were channeled toward the poles where they slammed into the molecules in Earth's upper atmosphere.
• The collision between the charged particles from the sun and the gas molecules that makeup Earth's upper atmosphere was so violent, it knocked the gas molecule's electrons into higher orbits known as an 'excited state'.
• As the electrons descend back down into their 'normal' orbits ('ground state'), they must emit photons (light). It is that light that we see as the Northern (or Southern)Lights
• When watching the Northern Lights, you can actually tell which gases are emitting the light based on their color.
  • Green light = Oxygen
  • Red or Blue light= Nitrogen