Tromsø Aurora Adventure

Experience the Northern Lights

The Northern Lights are a light phenomenon that occurs when energy-rich particles are thrown from the Sun
towards the Earth. It occurs in the upper polar atmosphere, between 80 kilometres and rarely over 500 kilometres above the earth's surface, when electrons and protons collide with the atmospheric gas. This gas is supplied with energy which is then emitted again in the form of light. The light emission itself comes mainly from atoms and molecules in the atmosphere and not from the primary particles themselves.

The Northern Lights appear in many different forms. The colours of the Northern Lights are a line spectrum that covers the entire range from ultraviolet to infrared. The colours of which an occurrence of northern lights consists are determined by the energy level in the particles and the composition of the atmospheric gas. The dominant colours in the part of the colour spectrum we can see are green, red and blue. The occurrence and intensity of the Northern Lights, in turn, are governed by activity on the Sun. The Earth's magnetic field and atmosphere determine where on Earth the Northern Lights occur.