Other forms: auroras
An aurora is curtains of coloured light in the far northern sky. See the aurora, the aurora appeared, aurora borealis.
It happens when particles from the sun follow the earth's magnetic field down at the poles and strike the upper atmosphere: oxygen gives green and red, nitrogen blue and purple. The southern one is the aurora australis. The name is the Latin for dawn.
1nounauroraCurtains of coloured light in the polar sky.
“In northern Norway, we watched the green aurora dance across the winter sky.”
aurora is a light in the sky.
Latin aurora means dawn, and was the name of the Roman goddess of it.
Proto-Indo-European
*h₂ews-
Latin
aurōra — dawn
English, today
aurora
Latin aurōra (“dawn”). a doublet of Eos.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA