What is the Aurora? How it is sparked by a geomagnetic storm

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Know what is the Aurora in brief here. And how geomagnetic activity or a geomagnetic storm can spark it. The aurora is one manifestation of geomagnetic activity or a geomagnetic storm. 

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Aurora is the glow or light produced when electrons from space flow down Earth's magnetic field and collide with atoms and molecules of the upper atmosphere in a ring or oval centered on the magnetic pole of Earth.

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The Phenomenon of collineation produces the light much like how electrons flowing through gas in a neon light collide with neon and other gasses to produce different colored light bulbs.

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 The Aurora is also called the Northern Lights in the northern hemisphere and Southern Lights in the southern hemisphere.

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 The technical term for the Northern Lights is Aurora Borealis and the Southern lights are called the Aurora Australis.

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 The Aurora was first used by Galileo Galilei.

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The word Aurora was derived from Latin and is the name of the Goddess of Dawn. 

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While the Borealis comes from the Latin word boreal which means 'northern' or 'from the north'. 

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The word Australis is Latin for austral, which means 'southern.'

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 The aurora is formed from interactions between the solar wind streaming out from the Sun and Earth's protective magnetic field, or magnetosphere.

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A geomagnetic storm is a major disturbance of Earth's magnetosphere that occurs when there is a very efficient exchange of energy from the solar wind into the space environment surrounding Earth, NOAA says.

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The largest storms that result from these conditions are associated with solar coronal mass ejections (CMEs) where a billion tons or so of plasma from the sun, with its embedded magnetic field, arrives at Earth.