Amazing Aurora

Kia Ora Bloggers,

In Maori, we have been looking at Matariki and the southern lights/ aurora's, today we started a piece of art to do with these lights. Here are some facts we have learnt:

The name Aurora comes from the Latin word that means sunrise or the Roman goddess of dawn.

An Aurora is a natural light that appears in the sky, usually, the colour is green but can sometimes be either blue or red.

The natural light usually occurs in the 'aurora zone' near the arctic poles, the north and the south.

Aurora is caused by the collision of energetically charged particles with atoms in the high altitude thermosphere within our atmosphere.

Auroras are associated with the solar winds that flow past Earth. These winds flow out from the Sun and contain plasma particles (ionized gas) which gets pulled into the Earth's magnetic pole fields.

As they accelerate towards the Earth, collisions occur between these ion particles and nitrogen and oxygen atoms in our atmosphere, releasing energy in the form of amazing aurora lights.

For our piece of art, we started off by ripping a piece of paper to make our hills, we taped that on hand flicked white paint onto make the milky way. Next, we used chalk pastels and drew on the white paper in a pattern with our choice of colours. Afterwards, we used different fingers to spread the pastel to create the lights, after everything has set you use light yellow paint to create the Matariki stars and you are done!

Here is how mine turned out: