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Originally Posted by ourkind
Beautiful work Colin!
Can you explain or confirm if the reason why most if not all of the aurora lights photographed from Australia are orange, red, purple due to the distance of the auroral activity far in the horiszon? Not sure if I explain myself correctly but the same reason the sun and moon are orange when rising and setting over the horizon?
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Thanks Carlos. Reds usually appear in the higher reaches of the auroral oval and green lower down. We see more red because the green section is usually hidden below the horizon from our latitudes. When activity is strong, Kp6+, the oval expands north and we start to see green on the horizon. Tassie commonly see green around Kp5 being closer to the magnetic pole.
The different colours are due to different ionization states. From wikipedia -
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Auroral colors[edit]
Red: At the highest altitudes, excited atomic oxygen emits at 630.0 nm (red); low concentration of atoms and lower sensitivity of eyes at this wavelength make this color visible only under some circumstances with more intense solar activity. The low amount of oxygen atoms and their very gradually diminishing concentration is responsible for the faint, gradual appearance of the top parts of the "curtains".
Green: At lower altitudes the more frequent collisions suppress this mode and the 557.7 nm emission (green) dominates; fairly high concentration of atomic oxygen and higher eye sensitivity in green make green auroras the most common. The excited molecular nitrogen (atomic nitrogen being rare due to high stability of the N2 molecule) plays its role here as well, as it can transfer energy by collision to an oxygen atom, which then radiates it away at the green wavelength. (Red and green can also mix together to pink or yellow hues.) The rapid decrease of concentration of atomic oxygen below about 100 km is responsible for the abrupt-looking end of the bottom parts of the curtains.
Yellow and pink are a mix of red and green.
Blue: At yet lower altitudes atomic oxygen is not common anymore, and ionized molecular nitrogen takes over in visible light emission; it radiates at a large number of wavelengths in both red and blue parts of the spectrum, with 428 nm (blue) being dominant. Blue and purple emissions, typically at the bottoms of the "curtains", show up at the highest levels of solar activity.[12]
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Some clever work that's for sure
