Heaven's Paintings : Aurora Borealis

I knew neither Aurora nor Aurora Borealis. At that time, the only thing I knew was Aurora Borealis is a song of my fave Band Meat Puppets (later on I also knew It's used also as a titled of a song by another band Pelican). Questions came in my mind. What is aurora borealis? how special they are? Then I tried to googling and searching in wikipedia. It's quite surprised when I know the exactly meaning of aurora borealis. I am not really interested in astronomy yet I love natural phenomenon Indeed.

An aurora (plural: auroras or aurorae) is a natural light display in the sky, particularly in the polar regions, caused by the collision of charged particles directed by the Earth's magnetic field. An aurora is usually observed at night and typically occurs in the ionosphere. It is also referred to as a polar aurora or, collectively, as polar lights. These phenomena are commonly visible between 60 and 72 degrees north and south latitudes, which place them in a ring just within the Arctic and Antarctic polar circles.[citation needed] Auroras do occur deeper inside the polar regions, but these are infrequent and often invisible to the naked eye.

In northern latitudes, the effect is known as the aurora borealis (or the northern lights), named after the Roman goddess of dawn, Aurora, and the Greek name for the north wind, Boreas, by Pierre Gassendi in 1621.[1] The chance of visibility of the aurora borealis increases with proximity to the North Magnetic Pole.[citation needed] Auroras seen near the magnetic pole may be high overhead, but from farther away, they illuminate the northern horizon as a greenish glow or sometimes a faint red, as if the Sun were rising from an unusual direction. The aurora borealis most often occurs near the equinoxes. The northern lights have had a number of names throughout history. The Cree call this phenomenon the "Dance of the Spirits". In Europe, in the Middle Ages, the auroras were commonly believed a sign from God (see Wilfried Schröder, Das Phänomen des Polarlichts, Darmstadt 1984).