Stargazing doesn’t get much better than this. The northern lights are expected to make an appearance in the night sky across Canada and the northern United States this week, thanks to a spectacular eruption on the surface of the Sun.
Early on Sunday, the sun’s surface exploded in a phenomenon called coronal mass ejection, spewing plasma into space and directly towards Earth, the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics said in a statement.
“This eruption is directed right at us, and is expected to get here early in the day on August 4th,” said astronomer Leon Golub of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in the statement. “It’s the first major Earth-directed eruption in quite some time.”
The solar plasma reacts with the nitrogen and oxygen in the Earth’s magnetic field, triggering geomagnetic storms known as aurorae, or the northern lights, which take the form of red and green rivers of light dancing across the sky. Usually only seen at higher altitudes in the Earth’s polar regions, a solar eruption of this magnitude triggers the display at lower latitudes.
Light pollution will make the lights difficult to impossible to see in major cities, however.
Scientists had originally predicted the aurorae would begin on Tuesday night, but are now saying they aren’t exactly sure when the plasma particles will hit the Earth.
“According to what I’ve read, it looks like it should be fairly quiet over Canada tonight but there could be aurora tomorrow night and Thursday. It doesn’t seem likely that major cities will see any aurora, although Edmonton is far enough north that they might,” an expert with the Canadian Space Agency said; however, a spokesperson added that it’s too early to say exactly where the particles will strike the atmosphere.
According to the Boston Globe, scientists will be able to predict exactly where the aurorae will be visible when the plasma passes a satellite positioned between the Earth and Sun. But even then, they will only have an hour’s notice.
Geomagnetic storms sometimes cause interference in satellite communications and can disrupt everything from power grids to radios. However, scientists say this coronal mass ejection is not large enough to cause problems.
The sun has essentially woken up since its last major eruption in 2001, astrophysicists say. The Sun goes through an 11-year cycle of calm and eruptions. This eruption is the first sign that the Sun is heading toward another period of maximum activity.
— with files from Ashley Csanaday