A stunning Northern Lights display is set to shine over parts of 10 states and all of Canada tonight.
People will have a chance to see the Northern Lights in Washington, Idaho, Montana, North and South Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, New York, Maine.
The sun released a powerful stream of plasma on February 25 that is set to slam into Earth tonight, colliding with the magnetic field and giving off magnificent burst of colors ranging from green to red, blue, and purple.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) says the best views are just after sunset or before sunrise.
Taking a picture with a smartphone camera may also reveal hints of the aurora that aren’t visible to the naked eye.
NOAA added that this collision of solar particles in the magnetic field – also known as a geomagnetic storm – could interfere with power grids and cause short radio blackouts over these areas.
Friday night’s storm could reach a level 2 on the agency’s scale of 0 to 5. That puts the event in the ‘moderate’ category for geomagnetic storms, with few disruptions excepted.
NOAA wrote, ‘The aurora does not need to be directly overhead but can be observed from as much as 1000 km [621 miles] away when the aurora is bright and if conditions are right.’
NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center predicts that up to 10 states may see the Northern Lights between February 28 and March 1
The Northern Lights are produced by the interaction of charged particles from the sun and Earth’s magnetic field
Geomagnetic storms are fairly common, with minors storms full of solar particles hitting our planet’s magnetic field a few times each month.
Experts with NOAA call these events a ‘very efficient exchange of energy from the solar wind into the space environment surrounding Earth.’
Large storms are rarer and are typically the result of a large coronal mass ejection (CME), when the sun shoots out massive amounts of plasma into space – sometimes striking Earth.
If Friday’s storm was bigger, hitting a ‘G3’ to ‘G5’ on NOAA’s scale, the Northern Lights would be visible even further south, in states like Oregon, California, and even Texas.
This space weather scale is very much like the scale for measuring hurricanes, tracking how intense a geomagnetic storm will be when it collides with Earth, ranging from G1 (minor) to G5 (extreme).
The current forecast also predicts that there may ‘strong’ periods of radio blackouts Friday night into Saturday morning.
NOAA warns that the G2 storm may lead to a ‘loss of radio contact for about an hour’ on the sunlit side of Earth. Shorter periods of radio blackouts may also last into Sunday, March 2 as the storm passes.
As for America’s neighbors to the north, Canada will be sitting right in the heart of the aurora’s projected path.
Alaska will also have a great opportunity to take in the Northern Lights Friday night and early Saturday morning.
Professional photography equipment can capture a better look at the Northern Lights than the naked eye, as seen here during an aurora in northern Canada
For those hoping to see the Northern Lights over the weekend, it might be easier to view them through your smartphone.
Darren Baskill from the University of Sussex explained that advancements in camera phone technology has mainly focused on improving our ability to take pictures in dimly-lit environments – like in the middle of the night when the Northern Lights are present.
This makes a smartphone camera much more capable of seeing the brilliant colors of an aurora than the naked eye.
Baskill noted that the human eye has two types of cells for seeing – ‘cones’ and ‘rods.’
Cones are sensitive to color but they need plenty of light in order to see them. Meanwhile, the rods work better in low light but don’t distinguish colors very well in the dark.
This is why the Northern Lights can often look like a big white cloud to the naked eye, while your smartphone camera captures a stunning green picture.
Baskill told The Conversation, ‘To compensate for the dark conditions, a camera can just take a longer exposure and collect light for longer, building up a picture of the scene and collecting colors that the rods in the human eye cannot detect.’
If you’re trying to catch a glimpse of the Northern Lights, the experts actually say this is one of the best times of the month to do it.
Since light is the enemy for any good viewing of an aurora, a full moon can disrupt your chances of seeing the Northern Lights clearly.
Since February 28 is a new moon, however, the sky should be sufficiently dark enough to capture a good photo if you’re in the right area.
