Northern lights were spotted in Switzerland on Monday night. This phenomenon is only rarely visible in Switzerland, Meteoswiss said in response to a request from the Keystone-SDA news agency.
The reason for this is the currently strong solar activity, according to the Federal Office of Meteorology (Meteoswiss). For the Northern Lights to be visible in Switzerland, the solar activity must be exceptionally strong. But even on Monday night, the northern lights were only visible for a very short time in this country.
Auroras are caused by an interaction between charged particles from space and the Earth’s atmosphere. They are triggered by the so-called solar wind. This consists of charged particles, mainly electrons and protons, which are ejected from the sun.
When this solar wind reaches the Earth’s atmosphere, the charged particles are deflected by the Earth’s magnetic field and directed towards the polar regions. This process causes the particles to get close to the poles. Once the charged particles reach the atmosphere, they collide with the gases in the atmosphere, mainly oxygen and nitrogen.
These collisions release energy and light. The stronger the solar winds, the further south the Northern Lights are visible.
The color of the northern lights depends on the type of gas particles with which the charged particles in the atmosphere interact and on the altitude at which these interactions occur. Green northern lights often arise from interaction with oxygen in higher atmospheric levels, while red or violet colors can arise from interaction with nitrogen.
This news story has been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team. At SWI swissinfo.ch we select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools such as DeepL to translate it into English. Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles. You can find them here.
If you want to know more about how we work, have a look here, and if you have feedback on this news story please write to english@swissinfo.ch.
External Content
Your subscription could not be saved. Please try again.
Almost finished… We need to confirm your email address. To complete the subscription process, please click the link in the email we just sent you.
Popular Stories
More
Identities
Switzerland’s most renowned trans person no longer wants to be a woman
Georgian billionaire threatens to sue Julius Bär bank
This content was published on
After a long legal fight with Credit Suisse, billionaire Bidzina Ivanichvili is now accusing Julius Bäe of political blackmail.
This content was published on
Switzerland’s finance minister concerned about economic slump recorded by important trading partners, the EU and Germany.
Report finds serious security flaws in Swiss hospital information systems
This content was published on
The IT systems of several Swiss hospitals suffer from serious security flaws, according to the National Testing Institute for Cybersecurity (NTC).
Cost of leisure activities rises dramatically in Switzerland
This content was published on
The Swiss paid more for leisure activities in December. Prices for vacation apartments, package tours and cable cars rose significantly.
New Swiss epidemic surveillance centre inaugurated
This content was published on
The Centre for Pathogen Bioinformatics was inaugurated in Bern on Thursday. It aims to improve epidemics monitoring in Switzerland using genomic data.
This content was published on
Switzerland, as a member of the European Free Trade Association (EFTA), signed a free trade agreement with Thailand during WEF.
You can find an overview of ongoing debates with our journalists here . Please join us!
If you want to start a conversation about a topic raised in this article or want to report factual errors, email us at english@swissinfo.ch.