Self Guided Tour Auroras seem to spread across the sky above us. From Earth we can only see a tiny section of the aurora's ring that circles the Earth. Just as the auroras move and dance in the sky above us, the ring changes as well. Look at the image to the left and below.
Satellites look at many different types of light emitted by an object.
To the right is an image of the x-ray light emitted by the Earth's aurora. If you would like to see other examples of images in non-visible light, check out How Satellites See . Auroras are generally centered over the Earth's magnetic poles. During an aurora, rings form around the North and South poles at the same time. You can see that more of the ring seems to be on the nightime side of the Earth.