These aren't really the best photos of the Aurora but they'll probably always be our favorites for a couple of reasons. First, they were the first! It was December 25th around 7pm (19:00) and we were walking to dinner when, BLAM, to our right, in the middle of downtown we saw this great band appear! The second reason I love these shots is because they were the only time we really saw clear and vibrant purple in the lights. For our two week trip, we saw the lights on six nights and this was the only real multicolored event. The different colors of the lights come from different gasses being stirred into varying excited and ionized states. Green, the most common color, is produced when oxygen is excited. Other colors appear when solar radiation is hitting the earth strong enough to excite other gasses like nitrogen for purple!
