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By Shane Croucher
Senior Editor
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The aurora borealis—better known as the northern lights—is likely to be visible across the top of the United States, and perhaps even in some central states, as a strong geomagnetic storm hits the Earth across Thursday and Friday.
The greatest likelihood of sightings stretches from New York in the east to Washington state in the west, but the view line goes as far south as Wyoming, Nebraska, and Iowa, according to a forecast map from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Space Weather Prediction Center.
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Viewing the northern lights is highly dependent on the strength of the geomagnetic storm and the weather. The stronger the storm and the clearer the night sky, the likelier it is that the phenomenon will be visible to humans.
Early on Thursday morning, the NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center said a "G3" geomagnetic storm was now in progress. The scale runs from G1, minor, to G5, extreme. G3 rates as strong.
This is a "larger disturbance in Earth's magnetic field. It can vary in intensity between lower levels and strong storm conditions over the course of hours to a day during the event duration," NOAA said in its Geomagnetic Storm Alert.
As well as visibility of the northern lights, strong geomagnetic storms can also cause problems with technology, such as fluctations in the power grid and interference with satellites, which can affect GPS.
What Are the Northern Lights?
Geomagnetic storms occur on Earth when charged particles from the sun reach our magnetic field and upper atmosphere. These particles emerge from a coronal mass ejection or a solar flare that bursts out from our nearest star.
These charged particles interact with gases in the atmosphere, such as oxygen and nitrogen, causing them to emit light in different colors.
To us, this reaction appears in our skies as the dazzling color show we know as the aurora borealis. This also occurs in the Southern Hemisphere, where it is known as the aurora australis, or southern lights.
The color of the light depends on the type of gas and the amount of energy released. It also depends on how much of the gas is present at any particular altitude. Oxygen produces green or red depending on the altitude, and nitrogen either blue or purple.
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