Watch as aurora borealis illuminates Alaska night with holiday colors in video

Holiday hues of green and red flutter in the night sky over Glacier Bay in Alaska in a video of the northern lights captured by National Park Service rangers.

“What better time of year for lights in the night sky?” Glacier Bay National Park rangers asked in a Dec. 20 Twitter post with the video.

“Holiday hues of greens and reds fluttered and danced in the sky above Glacier Bay this past Sunday night,” the post reads.

Also known as the “Northern Lights,” the aurora borealis forms 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 stream away from the sun at speeds of about 1 million miles per hour and reach the earth roughly 40 hours after leaving the sun,” NPS said on its website. “­As the electrons enter the earth’s upper atmosphere, they will encounter atoms of oxygen and nitrogen at altitudes from 20 to 200 miles above the earth’s surface.”

The color of the aurora depends on the atom that gets hit and how high up it happens. A green flare means an oxygen atom at up to 150 miles in altitude is struck. Purple and violet flares mean nitrogen above 60 miles in altitude, according to the National Park Service.

Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve spans 3.3 million acres of wilderness in southeast Alaska, including “rugged mountains, dynamic glaciers, temperate rainforest, wild coastlines and deep sheltered fjords.”

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, the park averaged more than 500,000 visitors a year, according to NationalParked.com.

This story was originally published December 21, 2022 at 2:13 PM with the headline "Watch as aurora borealis illuminates Alaska night with holiday colors in video."