Southern Lights/Aurora Austarlis

Howdy folks!

Today we have been learning about the Southern Lights as part of our Matariki this year. The southern lights are lights that occur when particles from the sun speed towards our magnetic field that surrounds the Earth at 750 km per second. Only some of the particles make it through the field and they react with the nitrogen and oxygen atoms and create the beautiful light effects in the sky. There are Northern and Southern Lights with the Northern appearing in the Arctic and the Southern appearing in Antarctica, the Northern Lights are also called 'Aurora Borealis' and the Southern Lights are also called 'Aurora Australis'. The lights are very unpredictable and usually appear during Autumn and Winter season, they are normally green but can have pink, violet, blue, and red. The name Aurora comes from the name of the Roman goddess of dawn.

For our art, we first ripped up a piece of scrap paper to create the mountain range shape. After that, we taped it onto a black A4 piece of paper. Then we took white paint and splattered it onto the black part. Then we waited for that to dry, after that we put chalk on the scrap paper then smudged it upwards to create the light effect. Last our teacher sprayed hairspray on it so it set.

That's all for this blog post, have you seen the Southern or Northern Lights?

See you next time!