If you have been out at night and have seen a red or green glow off to the north or east, you may have been seeing the Northern Lights.
The lights, also known as the aurora borealis, are not often seen in our part of the country. But thanks to recent activity on the sun’s surface, the lights have been visible as far south as Arizona.
"When we say the northern lights, we're actually seeing basically energetic particles in our atmosphere radiating light," said Dr. Jake Turner, a research scientist at the Carl Sagan Institute at Cornell University. "What we're actually seeing is basically big storms from the sun that spew lots of particles and energy out during solar maximum. And these particles interact with the elements in our atmosphere, like oxygen and nitrogen. And when they interact with that, they excite these atoms, and these atoms emit light."
The northern lights are usually only seen closer to the northern and southern magnetic poles, but Dr. Turner said the current solar cycle is what has been causing the them to be seen further south.
"The sun goes through an 11-year solar cycle and we're near solar maximum right now," said Turner. "A lot of these solar storms that are going off. And when a big one goes off it could interact with the magnetic field of Earth and actually cause the auroras to be more than just in the poles and more in the lower latitudes, like we saw here."
The lights are not necessarily visible to the naked eye, but there are some things to do to improve your chance of seeing them. Howard Manges is the chief meteorologist at WBNG-TV. He tracks the appearance of the storms and posts pictures and solar forecasts on his Facebook page. He also shares tips on getting the best viewing experience.
"It's going to be best to get to a dark location as possible. Get out into the country, get away from light pollution, get away from street lights, get away from car lights," said Manges. "You want as dark a condition as possible. You also want to allow your eyes time to adapt. Fifteen to 30 minutes is a sufficient amount of time to allow your eyes to adapt to the darkness."
Manges said it is best to use long-exposure photography with a camera or cell phone.
Just like the weather here on Earth, solar storms can be tracked. This means it is possible to know when the next round of solar storms will be visible.
"We can predict much better than we could 30 or 40 years ago," said Manges. "But we have several satellites that are in space. In fact, the newest GOES satellite that was just launched this spring has some new space instruments on it. We're hopeful we'll be able to improve space weather forecasting."
The next round of space weather can be followed through the NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center as well as NASA's.
Tell us some of the best places you found to watch the Northern Lights in our region on our Facebook page.
