What causes the aurora?
The sun is a very hot and stormy place, with its own type of weather. It is so hot and stormy that it cannot keep its atmosphere completely contained by its gravity. Hot, ionized gas (plasma) escaping the sun carries electrically charged particles and magnetic fields out through the solar system. We call this ever present stream of charged particles the solar wind. Earth is constantly bathed in the solar wind, and when certain types of violent ‘weather’ occur on the sun the wind blows harder. The earth is surrounded by a large magnetic field called the magnetosphere which protects it from the full blast of the solar wind.
