Finally, after waiting about 20 years, I finally saw the Northern Lights — or the Aurora Borealis — in Portland, Maine again. I was playing a gig through a lot of it but my wife, my dog and I hightailed it up to the Eastern Prom to catch the celestial light show’s final hour.
The Northern Lights are happen on a regular, 11-ish year cycle when the Sun’s energized particles crash into Earth’s upper atmosphere at speeds of up to 45 million mph.
The bright colors of the Aurora are dictated by the chemical composition of Earth’s atmosphere, or so I read.
