Streaks of aurora borealis illuminate the night after a Seldom-seen double solar flare, with future occurrences predicted for this evening.
Heck yeah! Let's talk about those jaw-dropping northern lights that graced our skies recently, and might still be on the agenda!
Last weekend, we experienced a double whammy in the form of solar eruptions, sending two coronal mass ejections (CMEs) toward our lovely planet. At least one of these cosmic thunderbolts made clear contact with our magnetic fields on Tuesday, causing a myriad of geomagnetic storms and a mesmerizing aurora display in the upper atmosphere.
Snaps of this captivating sight have been popping up all over the place, painting a picture of ethereal, dance-like lights across Iceland, Sweden, Finland, the U.K., and even parts of northern US and Canada. Minnesota, for example, seemed to join in the party, judging by the images shared on Spaceweather.com's real-time gallery.
Guess what? If this CME hadn't grabbed its playmate along the way, we could be in for another celestial show today (April 16). But hey, who's to say the prime time for this kind of action has already come and gone? The U.K.'s Met Office thinks it's a possibility, though, declaring that the first CME might've already consumed its buddy, preventing a double dose.
On that cheery note, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Space Weather Prediction Center is still making noises about a potential G3, strong geomagnetic storm watch for today. But if you ask us, the true peak of this geomagnetic storm seems to have already passed, hitting a scale of G3 - the middle-of-the-road between G1 and G5 (the most severe, for those keeping count).
We reckon the Space Weather Prediction Center is hopeful for another round of northern lights over North America tonight. Expect the intensity to be high up in Alaska and Canada, with the northern states in the contiguous U.S. potentially catching a glimpse of these phenomenal lights on their horizon.
Fancy yourself a budding northern lights photographer? Check out our guide on how to photograph the northern lights.
This round of geomagnetic storms started with two flare-ups on the Sun itself. These solar flare-ups are born from magnetic filaments - tubes of dense plasma - that usually take a wait-and-see stance above the Sun, secured by magnetic forces. But these structures can become unruly and explode if the magnetic forces lose their grip. In this case, we saw a rare double explosion on April 12 and 13, blasting solar wind and charged particles in our direction.
If these energetic particles make it to our shores and collide with Earth's magnetic field, they can induce solar storms, those magnificent, tumultuous perturbations in our magnetosphere, otherwise known as the region where our magnetic field dominates over that of interplanetary space.
Northern lights (auroras) are the shiny icing on the cake, forming when the sun's charged particles find their way through Earth's magnetosphere and whack into oxygen and nitrogen particles in our upper atmosphere. The particles then glow different shades as they shed their newly-acquired energy from the collision. Just imagine, it's like witnessing an electrifying disco finale-to-end-all-finales in the great vastness of our universe!
The extraordinary displays of the northern lights are a result of solar eruptions and coronal mass ejections, such as the ones witnessed last weekend, which collide with our planet's magnetic fields and cause geomagnetic storms. Moreover, environmental-science enthusiasts might find the process of space-and-astronomy phenomena like solar flares and the northern lights particularly intriguing, as they are related to the Earth's weather patterns and the interplay of charged particles from the sun with our planet's atmosphere.
