After many equally ingenious and erroneous proposals, Kristian Birkeland, a professor of physics at the University of Oslo, suggested that electromagnetism underlay the phenomenon. When he died, in 1917, his ideas were unaccepted by the scientific community, but he had hinted at the right direction. The northern lights, a stunning occurrence so attentively observed for so many years, have been accurately explained only within the past few decades. The first space photographs, taken by ISIS I, verified that the auroras existed simultaneously at both the North Pole and the South Pole. In 1989 the Japanese launched a series of satellites to make further detailed studies of auroras.
Astronauts continue to be privy to sensational views of the auroras.
To generate electrical power, the conductor must move across the field to produce an electromotive force. The magnetic field that surrounds the earth is somewhat like a Japanese lantern surrounding a lightbulb. The magnetic field is not spherical but is dimpled at each pole, like a navel, and it protects us from being frizzled by solar radiation. When these atmospheric atoms return to their ground state, they release energy in the form of light, each in its own characteristic set of colors. Since the auroras form rings around both poles where the electric current from the solar wind-magnetosphere generator enters and leaves the upper atmosphere, it is here that most collisions occur.