Question: what causes the northan lights to happen?

Nick Wright answered on 10 Mar 2014:

The northern lights are caused by tiny particles colliding with the Earth’s atmosphere. The particles come from our Sun, sometimes from its wind (yes, our Sun has a wind!) or sometimes from a giant eruption on the Sun’s surface (kind of like a burp from the Sun!). These particles travel through space until they reach the Earth, and then they get funnelled towards the North (and South) poles of the Earth due to the Earth’s magnetic field (the same force that causes the needle on a compass to point North!). The particles get funnelled towards Earth’s poles until they collide with the atmosphere and then they light up brightly due to the collision!

Have you ever seen the northern lights? Sometimes they can be seen as a far south as England when the Sun has a big eruption.