WJ,
Man, from St. Elmo's Fire to the Northern Lights, huh?
Well, the Aurora Borealis is a phenomenon of the Northern Hemisphere the Southern Hemisphere is Aurora Australis.
It's a natural display of light in the sky that are a continuous flow of electrically charged particles from the sun. These get trapped in our magnetic field and the particles strike atoms and molecules in the atmosphere that release the energy known as the Aurora B. or the Aurora A.
OK, not a meterologist here, just a pilot. So you might want to do a search on the old computer just to confirm the answers to your own questions.
Happy landings