Have you ever looked up and witnessed spectacular displays of green, white, pink and yellow lights? If you have ever visited the polar regions, or the auroral oval on Earth; then your response most likely should be a yes. The official names for these extraordinary lights are called aurora borealis, for the Northern hemisphere; and aurora australis, for the southern hemisphere. There are various media that cover this natural phenomenon entirely; however, one movie that includes the northern lights as symbolism is the movie “Frozen”. After years of being obsessed with “Frozen”, I realized that “Frozen” is the perfect example to depict northern lights. As the story explains, Elsa possesses magic, which ties into what our ancestors believed was the explanation for the aurora borealis. However, these lights do not occur with the use of magic.
I do hope at this point I have piqued your interest in the famous lights of the sky, to the point where you are eager to ask the question; How do these lights appear, and do they appear on other planets? To answer this question simply, the Sun and a planet’s magnetic field are the key ingredients in producing this natural occurrence. In space, our Sun goes through a vast number of natural processes. In order for Aurora borealis and aurora australis to occur, the Sun must be constantly releasing a stream of small, charged particles into space. To visualize, imagine the sun was always blowing a current of air, which contained portions of energy. This process is called the solar wind. When the solar wind hits a planet, it interacts with the planet’s magnetic field, which sends the charged particles spiraling around the field lines towards the magnetic poles of the planet.
Our planet of focus will be Neptune.. Neptune’s auroras look and act differently from the auroras we see on Earth. This is due to the tilt of its magnetic field being about 47 degrees away from how it spins, and the magnetic field being 27 times stronger than Earth’s, and because of the Trihydrogen cation (H3+) in the upper atmosphere. All of these factors about Neptune result in the cyan and whitish auroras that occur where South America is on Earth. Overall, Neptune is one of the four Jovian planets along with Jupiter, Saturn, and Uranus. Aside from its neighbors, Neptune is more than 30 times as far from the sun as Earth, meaning it is not visible without a telescope. This aspect intrigues me as Neptune is described as the least researched planet, spiking my curiosity about whether the planets experience the same natural phenomenon that occurs on Earth.