Transcript: The Northern Lights

Off: Seeing the aurora on any given night is far from certain. So to shorten the odds, I’ve recruited the help of an astrophysicist. Professor Mike Mott.

Prof. Brian Cox: Now, Mike, not that I’m complaining, but other than for reasons of pure enjoyment, why did we have to come to the Arctic Circle on snowmobiles?

Mike: We needed to get out of the city because the street lights produce a light pollution that actually make it hard to see the aurora. But it’s good we’ve come at the end of winter because actually the energy we take out of solar wind is a little bit stronger.

Brian: Yes, and this is, I suppose then, a perfect day, because we’re in late March, complete blue sky.

Mike: Fabulous. In these days, we’ve got eighty per cent chance to (... have it?)

Off: Soon after dusk, and despite clear skies, there’s no early performance from the aurora. So while we wait, Mike ran a film loop of the northern lights as seen from an extraterrestrial perspective.

Brian: Such a beautiful image, I hadn’t seen an image like that before, it’s taken from the proper Pole.

Mike: Yes, that’s a spacecraft in orbit around the planet, yes, going from Pole to Pole.

Off: From space, you can really see the impact of the solar wind. Its energy feeds an unbroken circuit of aurora that surrounds the Pole.

Mike: And while we feel that it’s a display put on just for us here, when you see the pictures from space you realise everybody on that oval is getting the display as well.

Brian: Well, my hope is that we’ll be directly underneath that tiny thin band tonight here in Tromso.

Off: Thankfully, our look holds, and the sky has remained crystal clear. Until at last energy brought by the solar wind sets the upper atmosphere alight.

Brian: Absolutely amazing sight.

Wow, they’re more like curtains of green. It doesn’t look to me like it’s cascading down, it looks like it’s rising up from the ground. It is quite incredibly beautiful.