My grandma's radio has an indicator that looks like aurora borealis?
I wonder how to make one myself because she wouldn't give it to me.The radio is old and big but beautiful so I wouldn't want to destroy it anyways.
In my opinion it has something to do with thermo-electron emission because it looks like a vacuum tube.
I think you are talking about a magic eye tube.
These are a variation of a cathode ray tube. It is a vacuum tube, where the electron beam hits a fluorescent screen, and the shape can be altered by a control voltage.
The type shown in the link below is the earlier round type, but during the early 1960s these were usually straight (rectangular) bars that could be used as a tuning indicator or an audio level bar graph for example, mainly for show. See the page on display patterns for the various types. This is in the time before digital electronics and integrated circuits, but served the same purpose as an led bar graph display, more or less..