PRESENTATION OUTLINE
The Northern Lights are curtains of colored light in the upper atmosphere, caused by magnetic disturbances from the sun collide with atoms there. Technically known as an "aurora" (the North Pole aurora is called the aurora borealis), the Northern Lights give off colors that include red, green, blue, and violet, and a single display can last 10 to 15 minutes.
The Northern Lights can be seen to some extent anywhere above 60 degrees north latitude. At 65 degrees, Fairbanks is within the so-called "aurora oval," the area where Northern Lights occur most often and are brightest. In fact, the Fairbanks Visitors Bureau says you have an 80 percent chance of seeing them if you stay there for three nights.
Denali, at 63 degrees north, is also a good spot to view the Northern Lights. Other Alaska places are far enough north for good for viewing, but are hard to get to and offer fewer accommodations. The next-best options are Nome (64 degrees) and Anchorage (61 degrees). However, the Northern Lights can sometimes be seen as far south as Juneau or Sitka.
By the time you get far enough north to see the Northern Lights more reliably, you've entered the area of perpetual twilight from late April through September. Seasonal cloudiness is also worst in August.
The northern lights are just about the only thing that could get Alaskans to stand outside without a coat in January.
But there the lights are, flipping and waving through the sky in shades of green, purple and red. And there are Alaskans, calling neighbors outside for a look and putting cameras on tripods in the middle of the night.
Usually the aurora borealis appears to the north of the viewer, but occasionally it seems to be directly overhead even as far south as Anchorage, which sits just north of 61 degrees north latitude.
The bright dancing lights of the aurora are actually collisions between electrically charged particles from the sun that enter the earth's atmosphere. The lights are seen above the magnetic poles of the northern and southern hemispheres. They are known as 'Aurora borealis' in the north and 'Aurora australis' in the south..
Auroral displays appear in many colours although pale green and pink are the most common. Shades of red, yellow, green, blue, and violet have been reported. The lights appear in many forms from patches or scattered clouds of light to streamers, arcs, rippling curtains or shooting rays that light up the sky with an eerie glow.
The Northern Lights are actually the result of collisions between gaseous particles in the Earth's atmosphere with charged particles released from the sun's atmosphere. Variations in colour are due to the type of gas particles that are colliding. The most common auroral color, a pale yellowish-green, is produced by oxygen molecules located about 60 miles above the earth. Rare, all-red auroras are produced by high-altitude oxygen, at heights of up to 200 miles. Nitrogen produces blue or purplish-red aurora.
