In certain polar regions of the earth, a rare and fascinating phenomenon occurs in the dark season of winter. This phenomenon is called the Northern Lights, or auroras. In areas where auroras can be seen, the sun shines brightly for six months and then disappears for the next six. The sun follows a straight path across the sky, rising in the north and setting in the south. This is because of the latitude of these regions. Unlike other regions of earth, the polar regions either completely face the sun or don’t face it at all. During the first six months of the long, endless nights of dark winter, auroras are frequently seen, almost every night, in fact. During the rest of the year, the summer months, when the sun is up even in the middle of the night, auroras can only be viewed by using complicated scientific telescopes. These auroras are produced by a series of solar reactions, they have given scientists much to study, and ordinary people the basis of many myths and legends.
             Long ago, in an effort to explain auroras, people made up their own myths and legends to explain them. Auroras were a power which they feared and respected. Some thought that there was a direct connection between natural disasters like droughts and volcanic eruptions and the occurrence of an aurora. Others thought they were the souls of women who died virgins. Still others thought they were the frozen wings of swans and other birds.
             However, modern science has shown that the scientific cause behind an aurora is very complicated and affected by certain climate conditions. The process starts in the sun, where high energy particles are blown away and escape the sun’s magnetic field and surface in a “high vacuum electrical discharge”. These particles accelerate at high speed in “an ever widening spiral” called the garden hose effect, because it resembles water coming out of a garden hose that rotates above a person’
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