‘Magnificent’ video shows how northern lights appear to the naked eye in Alaska park

Seeing the northern lights is on many bucket lists — and an Alaska national park is sharing the view.

Green and pink ribbons of light dance across the sky to create a stunning scene during the northern lights. The phenomenon, also known as aurora borealis, is rare in many parts of the world, and it can only be seen when the conditions are just right.

At Alaska’s Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve, however, park rangers captured the moment the sky came alive.

“For a few brief minutes, last night’s starry sky came alive with a shimmering ribbon of green and pink light,” park rangers said Monday, Jan. 31, on Facebook. “This video was recorded in real time, showing the movements of the aurora as it appears to the naked eye, dancing above the water in Bartlett Cove.”

Park rangers said the colors in the sky were vivid and made the snow shine as if the moon was illuminating it. However, there was no bright moon in the sky the evening of Sunday, Jan. 30, when the phenomenon happened.

Some people said they had always seen still images or time lapse videos of the northern lights, but they had never seen the aurora in real time.

“I have seen stills and time lapse but have never seen the ‘real’ thing. Until now,” one person said on Facebook.

The northern lights happen when a “coronal mass ejection,” or a big burst of solar wind and magnetic fields, mixes with elements in the atmosphere, according to the National Park Service.

Solar winds go away from the sun at speeds up to 1 million miles per hour. They reach Earth about 40 hours later, and their electrons enter the upper atmosphere. The electrons will meet other atoms of oxygen and nitrogen.

The two will crash into each other, which gives off different colors in the sky. This creates the aurora borealis.

“All of the magnetic and electrical forces react with one another in constantly shifting combinations,” the National Park Service said. “These shifts and flows can be seen as the auroras ‘dance,’ moving along with the atmospheric currents.”

People need to be in the right place at the right time to spot the northern lights, Space.com reported. The best place to see the aurora is in an “auroral zone,” which is an area within a certain radius from the North Pole, according to the news outlet.

This story was originally published February 1, 2022 at 4:08 PM with the headline "‘Magnificent’ video shows how northern lights appear to the naked eye in Alaska park."