Interesting Facts
1. The sun goes through a “solar cycle” approximately every 11 years where many solar flares occur and a great amount of solar wind is produced. During a solar flare year the aurora oval is large and can be seen at very low latitudes.
One solar flare can be as long as 12 earths!
courtesy of http://www.hermit.org/Eclipse/why_sun.html
2. The aurora's in both hemispheres occur at the same time and are mirror images of each other. This was confirmed in 2001 using a the NASA Polar Spacecraft that took video image of the auroras simultaneously and caught them moving identically.
3. The Roman emperor Tiberius (ruled from 14-37 AD) saw a bright red aurora and thought one of his seaports was on fire. He sent an army to put out the fire, but they found nothing. Courtesy of Mission to Geospace website
4. A French scientist Pierre Gassendi saw the light in the north in 1621 and named them after the Roman goddess of dawn, Aurora . He added borealis for the Roman god Boreas of the north wind. In 1770, 149 years later, Captain John Cook saw the lights while exploring Antarctica and named them aurora australis or “southern dawn”.
