Northern lights

We had a great astronomy class this afternoon and covered a lot of material, ending up with a study of the solar wind and aurorae. I team teach this class with my colleague E, so we do a bit of a tag team thing. We each get a rest between topics, but our wonderful pupils keep going through the lot!

E had great fun demonstrating 'flame tests' to explain to the pupils why gases in the atmosphere produce wonderful colours when they are bombarded by particles from the solar wind. Cue lots of impressive explosions of light and colour!

This photo shows the lovely green colour caused by copper atoms and is not unlike the green auroral ribbons caused by excitation of oxygen atoms in the atmosphere. All in all a very satisfying learning experience ......