Board Thread:Suggestions forum/@comment-199.253.12.158-20150625042042

I think it would be cool if places in the far north or south of middle earth would have either northern or southern lights on rare occasions. They would be pretty much the same thing, just respectively for each region. There are two ways that this could be implemented. The first way possible is by biome. Northern biomes like forodwaith or the grey mountains would be included in this. Southern lights would appear in biomes like far harad bushland and jungle. This might not fit for realism, but it still works.

Another way is to go by latitude. It might be a bit hard to code, but i remember something like this about water color and latitude. For northern lights, it would be anything at the southernmost part of angmar (but not in angmar, see below) and anything north of that. Southern lights would appear anywhere from the northmost tip of far harad bushland and south of that. Somewhat rarer than normal nortern lights, auroras will reach farther south, all the way to the lake by fornost (i forgot its name). Even rarer, it will reach as far south as the shire. As for southern lights, it can reach north halfway through far harad jungle. Even rarer than that, it can reach to the northmost tip of the far harad jungle. This is more realistic, but as i said earlier, it might be harder to code. Certain biomes would be excluded from this method, depending on atmosphere. For instance, angmar won't have any northern lights, due to constant cloud cover. The way for this to be implemented, is based on stars. If the stars don't shine in a biome, it won't have any auroras. Auroras will make the sky in an area lighter, as well. They can be a variety of colors, such as green, blue, red, purple, or yellow. They do not just occur in cold biomes, however. There are more details on that at the bottom of this page. They can last from part of a night to all night.


 * There is a common misconception that the auroras only happen in cold areas or during winter. This is due to their noticability in winter. The sky is much clearer in northern areas during winter, which creates perfect conditions for viewing them, as they require clear skies to be visible. They can, in fact, reach areas like australia (southern lights) or reach as far as colorodo (northern lights) and they in fact did reach colorodo on monday night, during a recent solar storm. I also saw them, but from further north in the usa (and they were quite amazing). Another misconception is that they reflect off of ice particles. They actually reflect off of ions in earth's atmosphere.

Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoyed both the suggestion and my mini lesson on auroras. 