The stunning view should be visible as far south as Oregon and Illinois.
If you’ve never travelled up to the Far North but have always wanted to see the Northern Lights, tonight may be your chance. Scientists from the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration are predicting that a solar storm may lead to Aurora borealis being visible as far south as 50 degrees geomagnetic latitude (Oregon or Illinois).
"The effects are strongest around the magnetic poles of the Earth, with the magnetic North Pole being in northern Canada," Piet Martens, a physicist at Georgia State University, told the CBC. Although the Northern lights are typically only visible to people farther north, Canadians and those living in the Northern United States may be in for a real treat.
This sighting will be possible thanks to an eruption of a magnetic cloud from the sun on December 28 that is taking a few days to travel towards Earth. This type of eruption is called a coronal mass ejection (CME) and involves a burst of gas and magnetic field released into the solar wind from the solar corona — an aura of plasma that surrounds the sun.
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A solar flare — “a burst of emission of X-rays, extreme ultraviolet rays and sometimes even gamma rays from a location on the sun," according to Martens — will accompany the CME, as is typically the case.
Jennifer Dombrowski, a Northern Lights chaser, explains that the visible colors are “created by the Earth’s spectra of gases and the height in the atmosphere where the collision of particles from the sun and the Earth’s gases takes place.” Green is the most commonly observed color, but the Northern Lights can also appear white-gray, sometimes making it hard to know what you’re looking at if the sky is cloudy.
For your best chance to see the Northern Lights dancing across the sky, head somewhere with little light pollution, look North, and hope for clear skies.
On the down side, this storm could affect GPS reception, and cause power fluctuations and radio blackouts. The impact should be minor but Satellites in space could be disabled.
If you miss tonight’s storm, look up again on January 2. Scientists are predicting an even more spectacular one!
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