Auroras will light the night sky in the US this weekend following a “cannibal” coronal mass ejection that hit Earth on Tuesday. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric (NOAA) Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC) issued a geomagnetic storm warning for August 3 and August 4, although the celestial show could be visible past August.
The lights were forecasted to reach farther south than is normal and may be visible in parts of the US including the states of Washington, Idaho, Montana, North and South Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, New York and Maine, said the SWPC.
At the same time, much more intense auroral displays will be visible in northern Canada and Alaska.
Scientists have forecasted more displays of the Northern Lights for the month of August, and even the months to follow, after it was discovered that there were more sunspots on the sun this July than any other time since December 2001. According to NASA, sunspots (magnetic disturbances on the sun’s surface) have been counted every day since 1611 to determine how magnetically active the sun is.
The celestial show that will be lighting up Earth's skies is caused by a coronal mass ejection (CME) that is associated with a powerful solar flare that erupted from the sun on August 1, Space.com explained.
CMEs carry electrically charged atoms known as ions and when they collide with Earth’s magnetosphere they can cause geomagnetic storms. The ions will interact with gasses in Earth’s atmosphere and emit energy which takes on the form of light, and this light is what we know as aurora borealis, or aurora australis in the Southern Hemisphere.