How do auroras form in the sky?

Auroras are like glowing ribbons in the sky made by dancing particles from space.

Imagine you have a bag full of tiny balls, these are electrons and protons, which are kinds of particles that come from the sun. When the sun is especially active, it sends out a solar wind, like throwing those little balls really fast toward Earth.

These tiny balls travel through space and hit Earth's magnetic field, which acts like a shield around our planet. Some of them slip through the shield and zoom down into the upper atmosphere, that’s the sky above us.

When they crash into gases in the sky, like oxygen and nitrogen, they bump into them really hard. This makes the gas atoms vibrate, and when they vibrate, they light up, just like how a bell rings when you hit it! That's what creates the beautiful colors of an aurora.

Sometimes it looks like a curtain or waves in the sky, that’s the little balls dancing and lighting things up as they move. You can see them best near the North Pole or South Pole, where Earth’s magnetic field is strongest.