Photograph of the Northern Lights, also known as, an Aurora. An aurora is a natural light display in … [+]
Be on the lookout for Northern Lights in your neighborhood this weekend as a lot of activity on the sun is increasing the chance more people than usual might be able to take in the Aurora Borealis (or Aurora Australis in the far southern hemisphere).
A so-called coronal hole in the sun’s atmosphere has opened up a gap in our star’s magnetic field that allows more solar wind than normal to escape from the sun’s outer layer, or corona.
The result is a whole bunch of charged particles slamming into our own planet’s magnetosphere, producing a moderate G2-level geomagnetic storm that could trigger some radio outages for mariners and aviators. But more of interest to the general public, such a storm moves the visible range of the aurora to lower latitudes than normal.
In particular, the forecast from NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center puts the potential extent of the aurora as far as 50 degrees of geomagnetic latitude, which means that some big cities like Boston, New York, Chicago and Seattle have at least a chance of taking in those rare dancing lights.
387304 01: UNDATED FILE PHOTO: Aurora Australis, the Southern Lights as seen from South Australia as … [+]
Of course getting away from all that light pollution would make for far better viewing. Locales in Idaho and Iowa could also be in range if things work out, and probably make for better vantage points, really.
Even if you can’t watch the lights in the sky in person, a number of streams online can give you a sense of what you’re missing (or what you can look forward to eventually seeing one day), including this one from Sweden and SpaceWeatherLive:
