Aurora Borealis, better known as northern lights, is a fantastic light phenomena on the sky in the northern or southern polar regions. The magnificant play of light is created when particles enter the Earths atmosphere from space and collide with the gas particles in the atmosphere.

Many people devote large parts of their lifes in observing and reproducing the aurora, either as scientist, artists, or amateur observers. The feeling you get standing under a bright auroral display a cold winters night is difficult to outline, but that feeling motivates hundreds of people to spend entire nights out in the cold of the winter. The image to the left is of the famous auroral scientist Rick Doe who is making a time lapsed 16mm movie of the aurora on Greenland.

My profession as a scientist is to study the physical mechanisms that generates the aurora using specially designed auroral TV cameras and radars. The animation on the left shows the formation of an auroral curl. Go to the Odin results page to view some movie clips of aurora that I have captured.