Chris Martin / Alamy Stock Photo
Phenomena like the Northern Lights and rainbows can seem magical – even to physicists like Partha Chowdhury who study them.
A May 2024 solar storm made the northern lights visible across parts of the northern U.S.
AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson
Phone cameras are an example of what’s called computational photography. Digital tools built into these cameras can enhance your images in real time.
Aurora spotting in Kendal, northern England, May 10, 2024.
Stop Press Media/Alamy
The aurora was noticeable with the naked eye – but was spectacular through a camera lens.
A coronal mass ejection on the solar surface.
(NASA/GSFC/SDO)
We’re currently a few years into the 25th studied solar cycle. An 11-year period of sun activity, this solar cycle is more active than previously expected.
The northern lights seen in the south of the UK weren’t quite as vivid as the kind of displays seen closer to the polar regions.
basiczto/Shutterstock
People expect to brave brutally cold landscapes if they want to catch sight of the aurora borealis. So people were stunned to see the ethereal light display as far south as Cornwall.
Lila, played by Ludovica Nasti (right) in the HBO production of Elena Ferrante’s My Beautiful Friend.
Eduardo Castaldo/HBO
Half-wild Lyra from Northern Lights was the first female character who felt real to Jane Gleeson-White. Then she met Elena Ferrante’s ‘ferocious, filthy, quicksilver’ Lila, a more complex version.
New research confirms how particles from space can be sent careening down into Earth’s atmosphere to create the aurora, filling in a missing piece in how this stunning natural phenomenon is generated.
Terry Zaperach/NASA
The sun has entered a phase causing more chances to see the northern lights in the UK, an expert explains.
PhotoVisions/Shutterstock
It’s often said that the aurora, or the northern lights, is caused by ‘particles from the Sun’. But in reality things are more complicated.
The Aurora Australis, or Southern Lights, reflected in the water.
(Shutterstock)
A curious kid asks: Why are the northern lights only spotted at areas around the poles?
John A Davis/Shutterstock
Depending on who you ask, the northern lights may, very occasionally, sound like ‘rustling silk’ or ‘two planks meeting flat ways’.
NASA
Researchers have found the first Australian evidence of this global event, during which people on Earth would have witnessed a multitude of spectacular auroras.
Northern lights in Lake Lappajärvi, Finland.
Santeri Viinamäki
As the Earth’s magnetic north pole heads towards Siberia, concerns have been raised that the northern lights could move with it.
A magical sight.
Ronel Reyes/Flickr.
The northern lights might look like magic, but they can actually be explained by science – here’s how.
Pink lightning.
Oranfireblade/Pixabay
A look at the spooky side of electromagnetism in our culture.
Truly spectacular.
Moyan Brenn/flickr
Historical records can help us understand what will happen to the northern lights.
Aalto University
Recent Martian findings are just the latest discoveries of aurora on other planets, both in and out of our solar system.
Hurricane Arthur photographed by ESA astronaut Alexander Gerst.
ESA/NASA
Astronauts living on the ISS get to experience the wonders of the universe’s natural phenomena like no one else.
Aurora borealis lights up the sky over Dunstanburgh Castle in Northumberland, England.
Owen Humphreys/PA
How scientists tracked a massive emission from the sun right across the solar system.
Time exposed photo of the Auroral Spatial Structures Probe Launch into the aurora.
Merrick Peirce
The aurora borealis lights up the Arctic night skies. Also called the Northern Lights, the phenomenon is the result of beams of charged particles tracing along the Earth’s magnetic field and entering the…