Light of the Valkyries is a production of both sight and sound, exploring the phenomena of the Northern Lights, presented in the Griffith Park Observatory, Samuel Oschin Planetarium. The show reveals folklore, legend, as well as scientific explanation for the beautiful light display that can seen above the magnetic poles of the northern and southern hemispheres of our planet. The Northern lights, also known as the Aurora borealis in the north and Aurora australis in the south, are a very colorful, striking image of curtain like colors moving throughout the sky.
For thousands of years, the northern lights have fascinated and amazed those who have seen the natural wonder. Although pale green and pink are the most common colors, shades of red, yellow, green, blue, and violet have also been reported. The lights appear in many forms from patches or scattered clouds of light, to streamers, arcs, rippling curtains or shooting rays that light up the sky with an eerie glow. The show at the Planetarium is named after the Norse legend of Valkyries. The Vikings believed the northern lights were female spirits called Valkyries that came down from heaven on horses to take the souls of slain warriors back to the
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Auroras arise when some of those particles enter the Earth's atmosphere and collide with atoms and molecules. When the particles collide, the energy used to give them their velocity changes into a light, the aurora. The particles that make auroras have an extremely high velocity due to the energy from the solar wind. The particles are caught by the Earth's magnetic field and are steered towards the poles. When a particle reaches the atmosphere, it collides with one of the many present atoms. The particle keeps on moving but with less velocity, since it has lost some energy to the atom. When numerous particles collide with atoms, releasing light, an aurora