The residents of Drama enjoyed an unprecedented sight on Friday morning as the northern lights appeared again in the night sky.
According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, today, there was a strong geomagnetic storm on Earth. The Northern Lights became visible across Europe and in the United States.
It is recalled that the phenomenon of the Northern Lights "dressed" the sky red in areas of Northern Greece at the beginning of November, creating magical images, as seen in the video below.
The leading professor of Astrophysics and astronomy, Stratos Theodosiou, explained the phenomenon to Dimitris Danikas a few days ago.
Read below a part of his interview:
-What exactly is the Northern Lights?
"Let's start with the word "sunlight". The ancients called the light from the Sun "aurora". Plato in "Cratylus," tells us that aurora and light have the same meaning and that the Moon received their name from the aurora because it sends us light. An aurora is an astronomical or meteorological phenomenon, as one likes to call it, in which moving colourful bands appear in the sky, centred over the Earth's magnetic poles, due to magnetic fields. A zone also appears called the "gentle glow zone" and is the diffused aurora. This occurs in polar regions, the North Pole and the South Pole. The scientific name is Aurora Borealis and Aurora Australis. It is formed when high-velocity particles - stardust, as it were - collide with oxygen and nitrogen atoms in the Earth's atmosphere."
-It also happened in Greece.
"It doesn't happen often in Greece, because the latitude is far from the North Pole and its magnetic field. But, as in all phenomena, in this one, sometimes on the northern slopes of Greece, we can see the Northern Lights, as it happened now in Macedonia. Whether this will happen again in a month, in a year, in ten years, we don't know. However, auroras are also observed in Greece, always in the north; we will never see auroras in Athens".
-And what are its effects?
“Look, this is a fluorescence effect, causing radiation to be emitted at all wavelengths. Let me say it in detail: in optical, radio, infrared and ultraviolet wavelengths. That is why its colour layers are different. It can be red when we have high-energy electrons colliding with nitrogen atoms in our atmosphere, or green-yellow, as is common at the North Pole, due to collisions with excited oxygen atoms."
- In Macedonia, it was red.
“Yeah, it was red, then it turned green-yellow. All of that, you know, is in the visible wavelengths. And when we say that something reddens or confuses us, we are either towards the red or the violet end of the spectrum. So, in this case, it is straightforward for readers to associate it with the phenomenon of the crimson Sun. The Sun is a yellow star, yet many times, at the limits of the atmosphere, we see it red when it sets. And we see the Moon red when it rises."
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