Aurora all year long!
"The Aurora Explained" does not only show lovely photographs and films about the Northern Lights, it displays an actual, shining Aurora, in a plasma chamber. This makes Tromsø University Museum the only place in the world where you can come to see Northern Lights every day of the year.
This compact and highly informative exhibition takes you into space, to a close-up meeting with the fascinating Aurora. How exactly is it formed? Here you get to discover the answer as interactive models and computer animations show the process - from the Solar Wind to tiny atoms and electrons.
In the exhibition you will find a plasma chamber - literally a piece of outer space. Here hangs a magnetic steel ball called "terrella", the Little Earth. When an electric current passes through the chamber, rings of Aurora lights up around the magnetic poles. You may try yourself - create your very own Northern light!
The University of Tromsø has a long tradition in Northern Lights research. Tromsø is one of the most important spots for Aurora science today, cooperating with other science institutions around the North Pole, in Canada, Finland and Japan, to name a few.
