🌌 מה גורם לזוהר הצפוני?

If you travel far enough north on Earth, to places like Norway, Iceland, Alaska, or Canada, you might get to see one of nature's most beautiful sights: huge curtains of green, purple, or pink light dancing across the night sky. This is called the Northern Lights, or Aurora Borealis. But where do all those colors come from? It all starts at the Sun, which constantly sends out a stream of tiny charged particles called the solar wind, traveling through space at hundreds or even thousands of kilometers per second. When these particles reach Earth, most get blocked by our planet's magnetic field, which acts like a protective shield. But some particles get funneled toward the North and South Poles, where that shield is weaker. High up in the atmosphere, these charged particles slam into molecules of oxygen and nitrogen, giving them extra energy. The excited molecules then release that energy as light, similar to how a neon sign glows. The color depends on which molecule is hit and how high up the collision happens: oxygen lower down creates green, the most common color, oxygen higher up creates rarer red, and nitrogen creates shades of purple and blue. The same thing happens near the South Pole too, called the Southern Lights, or Aurora Australis.