In episode EAT03 of KPO’s European Astronomy Tour, we’re visiting Sweden, the home of the Aurora Borealis, better known as the Northern Lights. This amazing phenomenon has been transfixing the snow dwellers of the northern latitudes for all time. We’ll learn a great deal about this amazing phenomenon in this episode.
So what actually causes the Aurora? The Northern Lights blaze across the Arctic skies in Sweden when charged particles discharged by the sun reach earth’s atmosphere. They are carried here on the solar wind and then collide with gaseous particles in our atmosphere. Watch the episode for more detailed information about these curtains of light that ripple across the night skies of Scandinavia.
Links from this week’s show:
An interesting site for auroral prediction is aurora-service.eu which has interesting gauges for various geomagnetic measurements such as aurora level, an aurora forecast with daily and weekly descriptions, and solar wind gauges. This is a fairly technical site, and is a great resource for learning the technical details of chasing aurora.
You can find our episode schedule on the main Tour page. As we are traveling around, I will be editing and uploading from the many hostels in which we will be staying, and the internet may be shaky, so visit the Tour page often to see any adjustments that may occur.
Watch this week’s show on YouTube:
You can find the Show Notes on our website at https://kpobservatory.org/EAT03/. Please feel free to leave a question or comment, and we will respond as quickly as we can.
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Star Chart Images & Simulations Courtesy of SkySafari Astronomy http://SkySafariAstronomy.com
Kissimmee Park Observatory is dedicated to the study and imaging of the night sky, and performing astronomy outreach for individuals and groups.