the BallPark goes to Iceland

we WILL see the northern lights

The forecast for Sunday on the web has been really good for the northern lights, so the whole gang was buzzing with anticipation.

We decided to test Vala on our chances and 5 times she said NO.

There were no northern lights.

facts about the aurora borealis

Aurora is a luminous glow of the upper atmosphere which is caused by energetic particles that enter the atmosphere from above.

On Earth, the energetic particles that make aurora come from the geospace environment, the magnetosphere. These energetic particles are mostly electrons, but protons also make aurora. The electrons travel along magnetic field lines. The Earth’s magnetic field looks like that of a dipole magnet where the field lines are coming out and going into the Earth near the poles. The auroral electrons are thus guided to the high latitude atmosphere. As they penetrate into the upper atmosphere, the chance of colliding with an atom or molecule increases the deeper they go. Once a collision takes place, the atom or molecule takes some of the energy of the energetic particle and stores it as internal energy while the electron goes on with a reduced speed. The process of storing energy in a molecule or atom is called “exciting” the atom. An excited atom or molecule can return to the non-excited state (ground state) by sending off a photon, i.e. by making light.

SO NOW YOU KNOW>>>>>>> it is an EXCITED ATOM.

i didn’t fool anyone

I had no idea what to look for. We waited and waited and I took this shot and got everyone excited for about a minute.