Keep your eyes on the skies starting Friday night for what could be a dazzling display of nature – or not, depending on your location and weather conditions.
Unusually increased sunlight activity means auroras, or northern lights, could appear in the sky as an arc of blue light.
If you’re in a place with a lot of bright light — like a city — you’ll have a hard time seeing anything. And then there are other complications, like the weather.
The Northeast will likely be covered in clouds Friday night. In the Midwest, skies may clear after a storm moves through.
Given the intensity of the solar storm activity, the lights could be seen as far south as northern Alabama and Georgia, where the night sky is expected to be relatively clear.
However, the southern Plains and Rockies can have relatively poor viewing conditions.
On the West Coast, conditions will be relatively cloudless, which should give you good visibility.
Some lights can also be seen outside the United States, in places like Denmark and other parts of Scandinavia.
According to the country’s Met Space Weather Operations Centre, it is likely the lights will be seen in parts of England.
“With plenty of clear skies forecast, you’ll likely see the Northern Lights across the northern half of the UK,” the agency said on social media.
Indeed, images of lights across England just before midnight local time began appearing on social media, including photos from London, despite the city’s light pollution.
Tip: If you’re in a clear area, even south of where the aurora is forecast, take a photo or video with your cell phone.
The sensor on the camera is more sensitive to the wavelengths produced by the aurora and can produce images that you cannot see with the naked eye.
Why is this happening?
A severe solar storm is forming.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Space Weather Prediction Center on Friday issued a rare warning after a solar flare reached Earth.
When nuclear reactions occur on the sun, it regularly ejects matter from its surface.
Officials said solar activity could cause power outages or interfere with navigation and communications systems.
Emissions can affect Earth-orbiting satellites as well as infrastructure on the ground, leading to disruptions in navigation systems, radio communications and even power grids.
It sounds alarming but don’t worry.
The warning is not really aimed at members of the public, so please continue with your day as normal. (Except maybe look up at the night sky a little longer.)
“For most people on planet Earth, they won’t have to do anything,” said Rob Steenburgh, a space scientist at NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center. “If everything works normally then the grid will be stable and they will be able to continue their daily lives.”
When does this happen?
Officials said material expelled from the sun could reach Earth’s atmosphere by Friday afternoon or evening.
“What we expect in the next few days will be more important than what we expected,” Mike Bettwy, director of operations at NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center, said in a press conference on Friday. see, certainly up to now”.
What is flaring up?
The Space Weather Prediction Center said Friday night that we were experiencing a powerful level 5 solar stormup from one level 4 earlier in the day.
The most recent extreme event occurred in October 2003, leading to blackouts in Sweden and damage to transformers in South Africa, the center said.
The current storm is caused by a cluster of sunspots – dark, cool areas on the sun’s surface. This cluster flares up and ejects material every 6 to 12 hours.
“We predict that we will have one shock after another throughout the weekend,” said Brent Gordon, chief of the space weather services branch at NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center. .
Katrina Miller And Judson Jones Report contributions.
