Tag Archives: Aurora Australis

🌃 Issue No. 17 – The Aurora Borealis (Plus, The 2013 Solar Max!)

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The Aurora Borealis, the year-round amazing display of color in the sky of the planet’s northern pole; it has laced through stories, poems, paintings and photography throughout the history of our species.  The Northern Lights.

The science of it – it is caused by electrons and other charged particles from the sun – solar wind – hitting the earth’s magnetic field, being pushed along the magnetic field lines of the planet towards where they curve to the ground at the planet’s two poles, interacting on the way down with the high atmosphere’s trillions of atoms, and so exciting them into the production of flamboyant light displays.

The one at the north pole is the aurora borealis, and the one on the south pole is called the aurora australis, and they usually are similar to each other at any time.

As far as poems – you may remember from Issue No. 15, Robert Service, poet of the North.  He wrote an amazing poem about the Aurora Borealis, The Ballad of the Northern Lights, excerpt below!

“And the skies of night were alive with light, with a throbbing, thrilling flame;

Amber and rose and violet, opal and gold it came.

It swept the sky like a giant scythe, it quivered back to a wedge;

Argently bright, it cleft the night with a wavy golden edge.

Pennants of silver waved and streamed, lazy banners unfurled;

Sudden splendors of sabres gleamed, lightning javelins were hurled.

✨ There in awe we crouched and saw with our wild, uplifted eyes

Charge and retire the hosts of fire in the battlefield of the skies.”💫

full text at https://allpoetry.com/The-Ballad-of-the-Northern-Lights

This year, specifically, in the autumn, is the maximum of the sun’s activity that contributes to the Aurora Borealis on an about 11 year cycle, so it should be quite a show!

Enjoy!  I bet you’ve never seen anything like this before!  They’re all so good, but the first and last ones are special!

(As posted at top:) 
 

http://vimeo.com/40555466  (Norway, Finland and Sweden)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lc3FxNXjBs0 (Finland)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZuXLGuPPgd4 (Alaska)

Woo hoo!

Can you think of a reason for not sharing this?  Neither could I.  

And do let me know exactly what you think of the Aurora Borealis videos and the poem!

Sincerely,

Paul Bakacs

The blog for The Beautiful Project is The Blog About Beautiful Things at: 

https://theblogaboutbeautifulthings.wordpress.com/

https://twitter.com/ProBeautiful

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