The Shining: What We Still Have To Learn About The Northern Lights.

A typical Alaskan sky, photographed from Eielson Air Force Base, 25 miles southeast of Fairbanks, displays auroral structures and motions that scientists still find mystifying. (USAF/ Senior Airman Joshua Strang)

From Air & Space Smithsonian:

What first appeared almost an hour ago as a strange green cloud in the northeast has now spread across most of the sky near Alaska’s Poker Flat Research Range. Sheets of green light shimmer in front of the stars, waxing and waning, as electrons from the solar wind rain down through Earth’s atmosphere, colliding with atoms and creating the aurora. Here, watching the light show under a zillion stars, I get a strong, almost physical awareness of being on a planet—a planet orbiting a star and connected to it, despite the 93 million miles of space separating them.

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