What causes the aurora borealis and australis?

The aurora borealis and australis are colorful lights that dance in the sky near the North and South Poles because of space weather.

Imagine you're playing with magnets, one is in your hand, the other is on a toy car. When you move them close together, they push or pull each other. In space, something similar happens: charged particles from the sun, like tiny electric balls, travel through space and hit Earth’s magnetic field.

This makes the charged particles bounce around like a game of tag in the sky. As they zoom down toward Earth, they crash into gas molecules high up in the atmosphere, kind of like when a ball hits the ground and bounces back.

When these collisions happen, the gas molecules light up, creating beautiful colors. That's what you see as the aurora, it’s like a giant, glowing paint party happening above your head!

There are two auroras because Earth has two poles: one in the North and one in the South. Just like how you can have snow at both ends of a hallway, the lights happen near both poles too, that’s why we call them the aurora borealis (Northern Lights) and the aurora australis (Southern Lights).