The glimmering Northern Lights and the shimmering Southern Lights are twin sisters known as the auroras. The most dazzling displays color the midnight skies within about 2,700 miles of the north and south poles. But auroras have been seen over Richmond, Virginia and Dallas, Texas and way down as far as Cuba and Mexico City.

Our scientists do not yet know all the secrets of the Northern Lights and there are reasons why these mysteries should be solved as soon as possible. The aurora sisters, the Northern and Southern Lights, happen hundreds of miles above the earth and our space ships must pass through this zone on their way to the moon and Mars.

Right now, Explorer XII, Injun and other high flying satellites are sending down helpful information. More facts are being gathered by radar, radio, rockets and balloons. The scientists already are sure of a few facts. But they only can suggest the full story of the auroras and wait for their high flying detectives to fill in the details.

We are, however, pretty sure of what starts the auroras, They are children of Old Father Sun and their mother is the earth, which is actually a giant magnet. Our sun, of course, is a star of blazing gases and once in a while its radiant face breaks out in a rash of spots. These sunspots happen some 92 million miles away from our skies, but we are sure that they are the cause of the dazzling auroras.

A sunspot is actually a furious magnetic storm on the face of the sun.

It may be big enough to swallow our world thousands of times over and torches of blazing gas called solar flares shoot up thousands of miles above the surface of the sun.

In the furious upheaval, clouds of gaseous particles from the sun are tossed out into space and whirl away in all directions.

The latest suggestion of the scientists will leave you breathless. They say that clouds of these energetic proton and electron particles from the sun itself actually roach our earth. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of miles above our heads, they feel the pull of our giant magnet. This makes them veer down towards the earthts north and south magnetic poles. There they collide with the scattered particles of thin air high above the ground. This traffic turmoil among speedy particles, too small, we are told, for our minds to imagine, causes the shimmering colors of the auroras.

 A recent theory suggests magnetic clouds of protons and electrons leave the sun at around 1,500 miles a second. The particles may travel in spiral paths and some of their energy is spent on the long journey across space. The earths magnetic field produces different activity, some of which causes the auroras. But some of these solar particles maybe captured and held in a belt of radiation which surrounds our globe.