Sure, let’s break it down. The aurora is a sort of light show created by charged particles from the Sun—mainly electrons and protons—that get caught in Earth’s magnetic field. They spiral down the field lines toward the poles, crashing into atoms and molecules in the upper atmosphere. Those collisions give the atoms energy, so when they drop back down they release photons, and that’s the glow we see. The green light comes from oxygen at about 100 km up, red from higher‑altitude oxygen, and the purplish hues are often from nitrogen. It’s essentially a prism made of charged particles, magnetic fields, and atmospheric gases all working together.