On November 3, Markus Varik, Northern Lights tour guide for a tour company in Tromsø, Norway, was on the street when the extremely rare Northern Lights appeared in the sky: they were pink and had a vibrant colorThe kind he’s never seen before in his career.

In reality, as Spaceweather.com later reported, it was a solar storm that caused a crack in the invisible magnetic field surrounding Earth. That hole caused energetic particles to enter the planet’s atmosphere and trigger that pink aurora borealis.

But before we move on to explaining why they’re pink, we need to understand how the northern lights’ formation process works. As NASA explains, these are streams of energetically charged particles known as the solar wind, pass around the magnetosphere. Earth’s magnetic field shields us from cosmic radiation, but this shield is weakest at the north and south poles, allowing the solar wind to pass through the atmosphere, typically 100 to 300 kilometers above the surface. In this process, the intensely glowing gases are mixed and superheated.

Author: Markus Varik

Auroras are normally green because oxygen atoms, which are abundant in the part of the atmosphere normally reached by the solar wind, emit this hue when excited. However, during the recent phenomenon seen in Norway, the crack in Earth’s magnetosphere allowed the solar wind to penetrate below 100 kilometers. nitrogen is the most abundant gas.

This is why auroras give off a neon pink glow when supercharged particles hit nitrogen atoms, as this Live Science article states. As a result, oxygen emits green and red light; and nitrogen glows blue and purple.

They will be more impressive in the future

After several similar events, scientists point out that these spectacular phenomena are only the beginning of what will happen in the future, as the Sun’s activity will increase in the coming years. Our sun has a cycle of activity and as it becomes more active, there will be more views northern Lights.

While this process can happen at any time, the amount of energy released by the sun changes over time. On average, the cycle of solar activity rises and falls over a period of about 11 years. And we are now moving towards a period of high activity known as the solar maximum.

Author: Markus Varik

Pål Brekke, head of space research at the Norwegian Space Center, explained in this article that we’re halfway through the next solar maximum. “There are going to be good years ahead. That means a significant 3-5 year period of Northern Lights activity,” he explained.

In fact, this 2022 we were able to see some wonderful displays of the Northern Lights in parts of the world that are not normally seen very often, such as the UK. These colored lights have been seen in the north of England for the past few months and are an indication of increased solar activity.

Images: Markus Varik