Aurora borealis spotted in the Swiss sky
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Listening: Northern Lights spotted over Switzerland
The Northern Lights, aka aurora borealis, were visible in parts of Switzerland on Thursday evening. But variable cloud cover meant that the spectacular natural lightshow could not be seen everywhere.
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Aurores boréales aperçues dans le ciel suisse
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They appear during geomagnetic storms when disruptions in the Earth’s magnetic field occur, giving rise to hours of brilliant auroras generally at higher latitudes. They are rare in Alpine regions, reports Meteonews.
Typically, this dazzling spectacle is most prominently observed at a higher latitude, closer to the magnetic north and south poles, where these phenomena are known as the aurora australis. As geomagnetic activity increases, the region of the aurora expands to lower latitudes, in the direction of the equator. When geomagnetic activity is very high, the aurora may be seen at much lower latitudes around Earth that would otherwise rarely experience these polar lights.
The light phenomenon occurs when electrically charged particles from the solar wind encounter oxygen and nitrogen atoms in the upper layers of the Earth’s atmosphere and ionize them. This is how the different colours are formed. In the green zone, the aurora borealis comes from an altitude of around 100 to 200 kilometres and in the red zone from an altitude of over 200 kilometres.
Translated from French with DeepL/sb
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