Northern lights

Norway is perfectly situated for observing northern lights. Norwegian northern lights have for that reason been used as a base for further research on the fenomen of northern lights.

Christopher Hansteen was the first big researcher of Northern Lights. Hansteen had a hypothesis: The observed northern lights arches had to be a part of a luminous - the northern light ring, also known as the Auroral oval. The northern light ring was entered over the magnetic pole, and not over the geographic. After researching the northern lights he came with a conclusion that took 100 years to be accepted in the international researching community, and 150 years before it was confirmed by observations. His conclusion was: "From this we are lead to assume that there has to be some sort of connection between the northern lights and the magnetism of the Earth."

Kristian Birkeland is another Norwegian researcher well-known for his research on northern lights. Birkeland's theory on northern lights was that charged particles from the sun entered the Earth's magnetic field. He built a model called terrella, which translates to small earth, and he used it to test his hypothesis. His hypothesis turned out to be right.

Northern lights occur when charged particles from the sun turn into a stream of charged particles called solar wind. When the solar wind hits the Earth's magnetic field one of the poles contract while the other expands. The charged particles hit the magnetic poles diagonally, and move in a spiral path down towards the magnetic poles, and makes both northern lights and southern lights.

Midday- and midnight northern lights are two different types of northern lights.