the aurora

I wanted to find out more about these strange lights. What are they? Why do they happen? Looking for the answers to those questions was how I ended up measuring the solar wind speed from the Arctic.

This is what aurorae can look like. Here’s another example , and another taken from the space shuttle

I spend at least a couple of days a month at Tromso in the north of Norway, at Sodankyla in Finland or at Kiruna in Sweden making my measurements.