Most people will never see the northern lights in person. They appear in the far north, in the dark months, on clear nights, and not to order. Those who have seen them describe curtains of green light moving silently across the whole sky. It is no wonder that the aurora is a favourite subject for art. This post explains what it is and how to use its colours at home.
What the aurora is
The Sun sends out a constant stream of charged particles, called the solar wind. When it reaches the Earth, the planet's magnetic field turns most of it aside. Some particles are guided along the field lines towards the magnetic poles. There they strike the gases of the upper atmosphere, 60 miles and more above the ground. The collisions give energy to the gas atoms, and the atoms release it as light.
It is the same process that lights a neon sign. An electric current excites a gas in a glass tube, and the gas glows. The aurora is a neon sign the size of a continent, powered by the Sun.
The lights appear in a ring round each magnetic pole. In the north they are the aurora borealis, in the south the aurora australis. After a strong solar storm, the ring widens and the lights are seen much further from the poles. The Sun's activity rises and falls on a cycle of about eleven years, and in the active years the displays are more frequent and are seen further south.
Why the colours
- Green is by far the most common. It comes from oxygen at heights of roughly 60 to 150 miles. The human eye is also most sensitive to green, which helps.
- Red comes from oxygen higher up. It is fainter and is seen at the top of tall displays or during strong storms.
- Blue and purple come from nitrogen, often at the lower edges.
- Pink appears along the bottom fringe of an active curtain, from nitrogen.
To the eye, a faint aurora often looks pale, almost grey-white, because our colour vision is weak in the dark. Cameras, with long exposures, record far stronger colour than people see. Most pictures of the aurora, photographs and artworks alike, show the camera's version. A bright display does show clear green, and sometimes pink and purple, to the eye.
The shapes
- Arcs: a smooth band from horizon to horizon.
- Curtains: folded, rippling sheets, with vertical rays, like a drape in a draught.
- Rays: tall streaks of light.
- The corona: rays that seem to spread from a point overhead, seen when you are directly under a display.
- Patches and glows.
The aurora in myth
People who lived under the lights explained them in many ways. In Finnish the aurora is called revontulet, fox fires, from a tale of a fox whose tail swept sparks into the sky. In Norse tradition it has been linked with the shields and armour of the Valkyries, and with a bridge to the realm of the gods. Among Sami people it was treated with respect and some fear, and one was not to whistle or wave at it. Several Inuit traditions describe the lights as the spirits of the dead at play. Further south, where auroras are rare and often red, they were taken as omens of war or disaster.
The name aurora borealis, northern dawn, is credited to Galileo in the early seventeenth century.
How artists show it
The Norwegian painter Peder Balke painted the northern sky in the nineteenth century. The American Frederic Edwin Church made a large painting of the aurora over an ice-bound ship in 1865. Since then the subject has belonged mainly to photographers, and now to digital artists.
The usual composition has three parts.
- A dark foreground: trees, mountains, a cabin, a figure. It gives scale and makes the sky look brighter.
- The lights: a ribbon or a curtain across the upper part of the picture.
- Stars, and often snow or water to reflect the colour.
Aurora pieces at Kiyo Arts
- Star Valley. A dark blue valley with three waterfalls, under a twisting ribbon of teal-green aurora. The classic green, over a landscape.
- Winter Aurora Light. A lone figure in a hat, seen from behind, looks out over a snowy forest. The sky is bright violet and white, and there is a ring of light round the figure's head. It uses the purple end of the aurora's range. See the canvas and the tapestry.
- Electric Water. An old computer monitor floating in a still sea, under a flare of emerald aurora. The surreal version.
The aurora palette
Aurora colours make a good scheme for a room, and they agree with each other naturally.
- Base: night blue, charcoal or black.
- Main colour: teal or emerald green.
- Accent: violet or pink, in small amounts.
- Highlights: white or silver, for snow and stars.
Green and violet sit far apart on the colour wheel, so a little of one beside the other is lively. Teal with deep blue is calm. See pulling accent colours from a piece of art into the room.
Where aurora art works
- A bedroom. A night sky is a natural subject for it. Dark, cool and quiet.
- A dark-walled room. On navy or charcoal the picture's dark edges melt into the wall and the lights seem to hang there. See wall art for dark walls.
- A desk or setup lit in green, teal or purple.
- A room without a view, such as a basement. See basement rooms with no natural light.
- In winter. Aurora and snow pieces suit the dark months and have nothing of Christmas in them, so they can stay up. See Cosmic Deer and Frost Owl for companions.
Lighting it
You can go one step further and echo the aurora in the room.
- An LED strip behind a canvas or along the top of a tapestry, set to teal or green, throws a soft glow up the wall, like the real thing above a ridge.
- Keep it dim. The aurora is a faint light in a dark sky.
- Add a neutral white light on the picture so that its own colours show. Under green light alone, the violets in a picture go dark. See RGB lighting and neon art.
Large is better
The aurora is about the size of the sky. A picture of it gains from scale. A tapestry of 68 × 80 inches, or a large canvas, gives the feeling of standing under it. See the tapestry size guide and celestial tapestries for the bedroom.
As a gift
For someone who has seen the northern lights, a piece is a reminder of a night they won't forget. For someone who hopes to, it is an encouragement. It also suits anyone from the far north, living somewhere else. Each piece is made to order, so allow 2 to 7 business days for production and 3 to 7 for US delivery.
For more of the science behind space art, see what a nebula actually is and black holes and wormholes. Browse the tapestries and canvas art collections.