A group of sunspots that lit up the sky over the Chicago area with Northern lights three weeks ago It will return this weekend, but the chance of seeing the northern lights in the city this time is lower.
the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) A moderate geomagnetic storm is expected in the Northern Hemisphere late Friday night and early Saturday, which will cause the northern lights to once again extend further south than usual, possibly reaching the edge of northern Illinois.
The solar storm is not expected to create a spectacular spectacle like the northern lights seen in the Chicago area three weeks ago.
A G2 storm warning, or moderate activity, was issued this weekend. In early May, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) issued a Level G4 alert for extreme activity, but the storm triggered G5 levels, or extreme activity, the top of the scale, according to NOAA.
“It is not unusual for a sunspot cluster of this extreme complexity to maintain its strength for weeks,” said Erica See, a spokeswoman for NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center. “The reason we’re seeing a return to activity now is because the group of sunspots responsible for the early May activity have turned back toward Earth. The sun’s cycle lasts about 27 days.
The Space Weather Prediction Center said the northern lights may be visible in the northern Midwestern states between Idaho and New York.
The northern lights forecast can be seen on swpc.noaa.gov.
The northern lights, which occur almost constantly in the planet’s polar regions, occur when coronal mass ejections of solar material from the Sun reach Earth’s magnetic field, causing a geomagnetic storm. Neon lights are produced by collisions between solar material and atoms and molecules in the Earth’s upper atmosphere.
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