Aurora
Mystical lights in the nigh sky.
Aurora Borealis, Aurora Australis, Aurora Polaris, Northern light, Southern light, Polar lights. All different names for the same effect.
Appearance
In the night sky above the poles or close to them, strange lines and waves, curtains, in green, red, yellow blue, purple can sometimes be seen to slowely move trough the skies. The lights move are not stationary but move, dance, in a simular fashion as candle light.
As the Aurora's can only be seen at night, and due to the earths wonky axle that makes that in summer the poles have sunlight twentyfour hours a day. The Polar Lights are treated as a winter phenomna.
The Polar Lights can be seen at lower lattitudes then people think, but these lower lattitueds overlap with heavily populated areas, so that they are lost in the light polution from urbanised areas.
Nature
Polar lights are created by solar rays and plasma that hit the earth's atmosphere at very sharp angles. Earth's magnetic field pulls these particles towards the poles where they light up in the skies. The Aurora also makes a noise, up in the sky a crispy noise, close to that of sparks can be heared.
Due to their nature Aurora's can interfere with radio and electronical signals, pushing radio signals hunders of miles offcourse or stopping others dead in their tracks, powering telegraph wires and train rails. Modern equipment has been protected with earthing and other systems against the most interference, but some Aurora events are stronger then man made inventions.
Name
Aurora is the name of the Roman goddes of dawn, Borealis and Australis are the ancient names for the Northern and Southern winds.
Sunset Dawn
The pirate crew of the Sunset Dawn sometimes uses Aurora as a false name for their ship. Often in combination with their Ensign of Liechtenstein.
I really like how you've explained how the aurora occurs in an easy to understand way. :) I like that the Sunset Dawn uses it as a false name.
To be fair, I don't understand completely how it works, there are also conflicting theories out there. I may have taken some short cuts for storytelling purposes, but also didn't make something weird up. The name thing was an idea that popped up while writing this article.