Aurora Borealis - The Northern Magic Light

The Aurora causes by the sun plasma which explode in every direction and travel across planets. When the solar particles are captured by Earth's magnetic field. They are stopped by the atmosphere, they collide with the atmospheric gases present, and the collision energy between the solar particle and the gas molecule is emitted as a photon - a light particle. And when you have many such collisions, you have an aurora - lights that may seem to move across the sky.

Today we know that for auroral light to occur on a planet or moon, it needs to have both a magnetic field and an atmosphere. Our moon do not have their own magnetic fields, Mercury and our moon have no atmosphere so they will not experience the aurora.

However, aurora also occur on Venus and Mars, which lack planetary magnetic fields. On Venus, atmospheric molecules are energised directly by the solar wind; on Mars, aurora occur near localised magnetic anomalies in the planetary crust which are remnants of a presumed former planetary magnetic field which is now long extinct.

In modern times auroras have been observed on several celestial bodies, such as, Earth, Saturn, Titan, Triton, Jupiter, Io, Uranus and Neptune.

You can see the aurora in both north and south Poles. Usually the north and south poles auroras happen at the same time, and when they do, they have the same exact patterns, only reversed, like a mirror.

Source : [Northern-Lights.no] [Aurora Article]