People through history have come with all kinds of creative explanations for the northern lights. Per Helge Nylund, who curates the Tromsø Museum, says the myths vary throughout the Arctic. In Finland, the lights were called fox flames, and were considered magic. In western Norway, they were thought to be maidens waving mittens. In Ottawa, a beacon from a mighty spirit. Vikings believed the northern lights were a bridge between gods and humans. And Siberians believed the lights were an actual goddess.

In pictures and in person, the Earth's aurora looks sorta like wispy clouds made of emerald fuzz. That's gorgeous and all, but we need a clearer picture for scientific study. Auroras, which happen when charged particles from the sun enter Earth's magnetic field, could reveal a lot to us about how the Earth and the Sun interact. Most cameras just swallow all the light into one image when you take a picture, so researchers would have to use filters to study specific bands of the spectrum.

Here, a two-stage suborbital rocket rips across the auroras over Alaska. The small rocket was launched by scientists Saturday as part of a NASA-backed study into how auroras can affect signals coming to and from satellites and spacecraft. Scientists hope to better understand the way space weather impacts our electrical systems on Earth and in orbit in order to possibly mitigate those effects as the sun builds toward its solar maximum in 2013.