Northern Lights (Re: Perseids meteor shower tonight!)

[Doug Craigen <dcc@ESCAPE.CA>]

Daniel L. MacIsaac wrote:
> Perseids Meteor shower arrives tonight!
>
> QUOTE gleefully cut-and-paste-ripped-off from Sky&Telescope
> online:
>
> Perseids (Aug. 8-15). This best-known meteor shower has a broad

I had forgotten about this, but last night we were out on our back deck
watching the northern lights (my brother has just moved up to Winnipeg
from California - so we were showing his kids one of the natural wonders
you can see from here).  Anyways, after a minute "hey, there's a falling
star".  A minute later "there's another one".  All in all a good evening
for watching the sky and teaching the kids a bit of science.

One thing I couldn't properly answer though, and I did know the answer to
this once, "was why do we never hear about Southern Lights?"  One thing
that occured to me was that even if they exist they would not be well
known because only the tips of Chile and New Zealand are as far south as
we are north - and lots of people live further north than we do (getting
a better view of the Northern Lights).  Hence, even all things being
equal, the Northern Lights would be a much better known phenomena.