Hey there,
From prehistoric times, humans have been fascinated by the auroral lights.
The earliest known account of northern lights appears to be from a Babylonian clay tablet from observations made by the official astronomers of King Nebuchadnezzar II.
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| Cro-Magnon cave-paintings: "macaronis" may be the earliest depiction of aurora (30,000 B.C.) Image Credit: Crawford Library, Royal Observatory, Edinburgh. |
The first printed document about the northern lights was produced in 1490.
The term “Aurora Borealis” was first used by Pierre Gassendi (1592-1655) and Galileo Galilei (1564-1642), both of whom witnessed a light display on 12th September 1621. The name comes from the name of the Roman goddess of the morning, Aurora.
After the northern lights of the year 1621, the auroras were missing almost totally during the next hundred years. That period is known as the Maunder minimum. It was ended by the enormous northern lights of the 17th March, 1716.
In 1790, Henry Cavendish made scientific observations of the aurora. He used a technique known as triangulation to estimate that the aurora light is produced around 60 miles above Earth's surface. In 1902-1903 Kristian Birkeland, a Norwegian physicist, discovered that auroral light was caused by currents flowing through the gas of the upper atmosphere.
Spectacular auroral eruptions have given rise to mythology. There have been many different beliefs about the aurora and its association with the spirit world. Stories have been told of people's whistling bringing down the aurora to cut off the whistler's head. The aurora lights have also been seen as spirit ancestors to help hunters find their prey.
Emily ✵
https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/themis/auroras/aurora_history.html
https://www.loc.gov/rr/scitech/mysteries/northernlights.html
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