In Scandinavia, the most active northern lights appear most often before midnight. Look closely – if you see stars through it, it’s northern lights and also the northern lights change shape all the time unlike a cloud. If the northern lights are very weak, it can be difficult to distinguish from a cloud. Therefore, you have the chance to see the northern lights as soon as the sky gets dark enough and it is fairly clear weather. The northern lights are always present in the sky, even during the day, however, the sky is too bright for the northern lights to be seen. The time of the northern lights varies depending on how early the darkness occurs during the winter season you can see the northern lights as early as 16:00 in the afternoon. Often you can see the northern lights as early as the end of August until a bit in April. Kiruna’s location within the auroral oval offers fantastic opportunities to see the northern lights from September to March. So the visible lines of the magnetic field create the curtain of colours that we see in the northern lights. This collision shifts the energy temporarily and converts it into light. They then follow the field lines down through the upper atmosphere, at altitudes of 80–300 kilometres, and collide with oxygen and nitrogen. The Earth is surrounded by magnetic field lines, and high-energy particles from the sun are dragged down towards the Earth when they’re captured by these lines. The magnetosphere captures and redirects particles of energy from the sun, and the beautiful light and colours of the northern lights are created when these come into contact with oxygen and nitrogen. The northern lights are created by a combination of the sun, the atmosphere and magnetic fields. The imaginative stories around the northern lights are many and entertaining, but today we know a lot more about how the northern lights occur. Lipi is an abbreviation of the word lihphuit meaning fluttering. They believed that you could change the weather by changing the northern lights, including a chant that started “gokseth lipi, lipi”. Some made sure their kids wore hats outside so that the lights could not burn their hair. The Sámi also believed that northern lights and weather had a connection. Whistling or to joik (Sámi singing) disrespectfully under northern lights could be dangerous! A belief common to many indigenous peoples in northern Europe, America and Asia is that the northern lights were the place where the dead resided, but only those who died a violent or premature death were welcome to the northern lights. Among the Sámi, it was important to meet the northern lights with reverence. Since ancient times people has been amazed by the northern lights and tried to relate to it through myths and legends. The northern Sámi name for the northern lights, guovsahas, is also linked with the light of dawn. So the name actually means “northerly dawn” or “northerly light of dawn”. Aurora was the goddess of the dawn in ancient Roman mythology, and Borealis means “northerly”. Their Latin name, aurora borealis, came into use back in the 17th century. The beautiful, different coloured lights that you can see dancing across the sky in the northern parts of the world are known as the northern lights.
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