Auroras may Light up Earth’s Skies again in early June: Key nights to watch.
If you want to see the northern lights from outside the Arctic Circle, be ready to drive to a dark place during the first week of June.
The strongest geomagnetic storm in over twenty years occurred between May 10 and May 12, lighting up the skies with colorful auroras as far south as Florida and Mexico, which is extremely rare.
This happened because at least five solar storms hit Earth at the same time, all coming from a large sunspot called active region 3664 (AR3664). This sunspot is more than 15 times wider than Earth. The charged particles from the sunspot collided with Earth’s magnetosphere and were directed towards the poles, creating vibrant auroras.
Sunspot Returns: Potential for Spectacular Auroras During June’s New Moon
The solar storms arrived just after May’s new moon, when the night sky was dark and moonless, making it easier to see even faint auroras.
The sun rotates once every 27 days, so the sunspot disappeared from view about a week later but continued to produce solar flares. On May 20, it emitted a powerful X12 solar flare, the strongest since September 2017, observed by the European Space Agency’s Solar Orbiter spacecraft.
The sunspot AR3664/AR13664 is now becoming visible again as the sun rotates and will face Earth again during the new moon on June 6.
“It will align nicely,” said Ryan French, a solar physicist at the National Solar Observatory in Boulder, Colorado, to Live Science. “As soon as the sunspot starts to appear, we will have a window of opportunity for solar flares.”
Read the Original Article LiveScience
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