Northern Lights: What each color means

well many of us saw the norn lights over the weekend of course it was more your cameras that were able to see it not really to the naked eye because of our latitude but how do the auroras even form and why do we see them here on our planet well of course the Earth has a magnetic field it protects us from the sun's radiation and of course the sun doesn't emit that radiation the charged protons and electrons are emitted from the Sun and typically where these protons and electrons go are to the weakest part of our magnetic field which is the pole that's why the North and South Poles typically see the aurora borealis or the Northern Lights more than the rest of the planet but sometimes you can get some really strong solar storms that can uh move the norn lights further south and allow us here in New England or other parts of the country to be able to see it so when it comes to the norn lights many of us saw different colors such as purple green even some blues and that comes to molecules in the atmosphere of where the solar radiation reflect off of so when the radiation gets in contact with oxygen molecules that is when you see the red auroras blue auroras are nitrogen molecules green is oxygen and pink auroras which is pretty rare because it's the lowest layer of the atmosphere is nitrogen molecules working for you I'm 20th disty meteorologist Chris bakis