Try to find a spot with little or no light pollution.If you are hoping a catch a glimpse of this week’s lights show, here’s a few tips to get the best view:
The next one will take place on 23 September.Ī strong geomagnetic storm could push the Northern Lights farther south this week - making them visible in parts of the mainland U.S., including Pennsylvania, Iowa and Oregon.
The phenomenon is most eye-catching on clear, cloudless nights and there is typically greater activity around the equinoxes, when there are exactly 12 hours of daylight and 12 hours of sunlight in a day. The Northern Lights are usually clearest under dark skies from August until mid-April. Typically aurora borealis is only visible closer to the North Pole, in Alaska and Canada, but the solar storm will push them further south on Thursday and Friday and could be seen in Pennsylvania, Iowa and Oregon. These charged particles will light up the night sky and make the Northern Lights visible in mainland US.īrian Lada of AccuWeather explains: “These clouds of particles are predicted to collide with Earth’s magnetic field on Wednesday night into Thursday, sparking dazzling displays of the aurora.” When can I see the Northern Lights in the US? They put out a forecast track of CMEs (Coronal Mass Ejections).Īnother NOAA site, has all the graphs including ACE real time solar wind for the bz component model.Parts of the United States could be in for a treat this week as aurora borealis, also known as the Northern Lights, could make a rare appearance in the skies for two nights in a row.Įxplosions on the surface of the sun have sparked coronal mass ejections, sending clouds of charged particles into the solar system. Lots of graphs and details and everything explained! Lots of info on this page, just click around! Good overall site to learn about spaceweather- you can subscribe to aurora alerts here. Headlands International Dark Sky Park Clear Sky Chart Learn more about the Northern Lights phenomenon at the following links: Also note that aurora are usually most active after midnight, and you’ll do best if you start out by looking north. And they are elusive, which means they can also occur without any warning! We have included here some great sites that you can research in order to help you in your hunt for aurora, and please note that we love it when you share pictures of what you’ve found in the night sky you can email them to us at or message them to us through the Headlands Facebook page. This solar wind puts a pressure on Earth’s magnetic field, which is not uniform, and when we come ’round to the times of Equinox every Spring and Fall, it seems the most vulnerable part of our magnetic field is exposed to the pressure of solar wind, and an increase in aurora is the result!Īurora predictions usually come only a day or two in advance of their occurrence, so please note that it is difficult to plan ahead if you are traveling from a great distance. The Northern Lights are a spectacular phenomenon that are hard to predict, and hard to forget! Their occurrence is tied to the activity of the Sun, and the solar wind caused by the eruption of spots on the Sun’s surface. While we watched the wonder of waving color from the Headlands shoreline Labor Day weekend 2016, Jason Gillman was two miles east, catching the aurora as it draped itself beautifully over the shoulders of the Mackinac Bridge.
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