The beautiful colors of the aurora occur when charged particles from the Sun collide with molecules in the Earth's upper atmosphere, typically close to the northern or southern magnetic pole.
This photo of the aurora borealis, or northern lights, was taken from a jet plane 37,000 feet over the middle of Hudson Bay in Canada. The green you see, which is the most common auroral color (wavelength of 5577 angstroms), comes from oxygen atoms in the atmosphere perhaps 50 to 100 miles up.
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