AURORA BOREALIS

Pronunciation (US):

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does aurora borealis mean? 

• AURORA BOREALIS (noun)
  The noun AURORA BOREALIS has 1 sense:

1. the aurora of the northern hemisphere

  Familiarity information: AURORA BOREALIS used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• AURORA BOREALIS (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

The aurora of the northern hemisphere

Classified under:

Nouns denoting natural phenomena

Synonyms:

aurora borealis; northern lights

Hypernyms ("aurora borealis" is a kind of...):

aurora (an atmospheric phenomenon consisting of bands of light caused by charged solar particles following the earth's magnetic lines of force)

 Context examples 

I tell ye that when they got here they'd be jommlin' an' jostlin' one another that way that it 'ud be like a fight up on the ice in the old days, when we'd be at one another from daylight to dark, an' tryin' to tie up our cuts by the light of the aurora borealis." This was evidently local pleasantry, for the old man cackled over it, and his cronies joined in with gusto.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

With the aurora borealis flaming coldly overhead, or the stars leaping in the frost dance, and the land numb and frozen under its pall of snow, this song of the huskies might have been the defiance of life, only it was pitched in minor key, with long-drawn wailings and half-sobs, and was more the pleading of life, the articulate travail of existence.

(The Call of the Wild, by Jack London)

To a man of philosophic temperament like myself the blood-tick, with its lancet-like proboscis and its distending stomach, is as beautiful a work of Nature as the peacock or, for that matter, the aurora borealis.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Auroras at Earth's poles (known as the aurora borealis at the North Pole and aurora australis at the South Pole) occur when the energetic particles blown out from the Sun (the solar wind) interact with and heat up the gases in the upper atmosphere.

(Jupiter's Atmosphere Heats up under Solar Wind, NASA)