Last night...

after a long day, I was ready to go to bed at 11pm. I switched off the lights, and out of habit drew my curtain and looked out the window. It caught me off guard at first, as I was not expecting it. The mixture of blue, greenish and turquoise colours against the black pitch sky simply took my breath away. It was simply amazing. Beautiful. What I saw was the Northern Lights, also known as "aurora borealis." I'm not a scientific person, so I can't tell you what exactly it is. All I know about the Northern Lights is that it's the dancing lights which can be seen in its full magnificence in places faraway from civiliazation (no lights and tall buildings) at night in the polar zone. It dances with a variety of colours and it is said that the movement of its 'dance' is accompanied by its dancing sound. I didn't exactly saw it dancing last night since there was way too much street lights (I do live in a city) and blocked by roofs of houses. But still, it was very pretty, and I feel so blessed to see such a rarity happening in the very sky outside my window!

For more scientific people:

The aurora is now known to be caused by electrons of typical energy of 1-15 keV, i.e. the energy obtained by the electrons passing through a voltage difference of 1,000-15,000 volts. The light is produced when they collide with atoms of the upper atmosphere, typically at altitudes of 80-150 km. It tends to be dominated by emissions of atomic oxygen--the greenish line at 557.7 nm and (especially with electrons of lower energy and higher altitude) the dark-red line at 630.0 nm. Both these represent forbidden transitions of atomic oxygen from energy levels which (in absence of collisions) persist for a long time, accounting for the slow brightening and fading (0.5-1 sec) of auroral rays. Many other lines can also be observed, especially those of molecular nitrogen, and these vary much faster, revealing the true dynamic nature of the aurora.





http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurora_%28phenomenon%29