When solar activity ramps up, so do the chances of seeing a dazzling display of the Northern Lights.
FAIRBANKS, Alaska – This week, NASA aims to fire off rockets into the night sky over Alaska in an attempt to better understand polar auroras – more commonly known as the Northern Lights.
7 THINGS TO KNOW ABOUT THE NORTHERN LIGHTS
If you missed out on the Northern Lights on New Year’s Eve, you’ll have another chance Wednesday night as a “severe” geomagnetic storm is now underway and could bring Aurora displays as far south as Alabama and Northern California.
Like a snowflake or a fingerprint, each aurora is unique. They appear as ribbons of light, ranging over the whole color spectrum. Each event is a one-time-only light show across the night sky.
While scientists have a general understanding of what causes polar auroras – charged particles released by the Sun, known as solar flares, interacting with Earth’s magnetic field – they’re not sure what causes their unique movements.
Specifically, researchers at NASA want to understand why some auroras flicker, others pulsate, and others appear to have holes.
COUPLE GETS ENGAGED UNDER DAZZLING NORTHERN LIGHTS SHOW
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This photo shows a vivid northern lights display over a home in Alaska on Nov. 23, 2024. (Vincent Ledvina via Storyful)
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Aurora in Washington, DC (Jonah Bryson )
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A photo of Aurora lights taken from the International Space Station by NASA astronaut Matthew Dominick. (Matthew Dominick/NASA)
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Aurora lights seen from Lindenhurst, New York on Oct. 10, 2024 during a severe geomagnetic storm. (Seth Darling/FOX Weather)
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Northern Lights from Missoula, Montana during an extreme geomagnetic storm on May 10, 2024. (NWS Missoula)
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Northern Lights from Seattle during an extreme geomagnetic storm on May 10, 2024. (NWS Seattle)
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Purple aurora shine bright above bioluminescent seas along the north Washington coast on July 18, 2022. (Mathew Nichols Photography)
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Purple aurora shine bright above bioluminescent seas along the north Washington coast on July 18, 2022. (Mathew Nichols Photography)
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Northern lights (aurora borealis) illuminate the sky over Reinfjorden in Reine, on Lofoten Islands, Arctic Circle, on September 8, 2017. (Jonathan Nackstrand/AFP)
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View of aurora borealis storm during midnight in Yellowknife, Canada. (Photo by Dominic Chiu/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center is flying two creatively named missions out of the Poker Flat Research Range in Fairbanks.
The first mission, designated as “Ground Imaging to Rocket investigation of Auroral Fast Features (GIRAFF),” is aimed at firing rockets at what NASA has determined are the two distinct subtypes of aurora: “so-called fast-pulsating auroras, which flash on and off a few times a second, and the other for flickering auroras, which do so up to 15 times a second.”
Each rocket is equipped with instruments that will take measurements of collisions between electrons coming from solar flares and electrons in Earth’s magnetosphere.
A second mission will fire rockets into the dark spots or “holes” in auroras to try and determine what cases them to occur.
The mission is named the Black and Diffuse Aurora Science Surveyor. According to a news release from NASA, “Its acronym will be left as an exercise to the reader.”
Aurora chaser and photographer Vincent Ledvina said auroras of all colors were dancing across the entire sky of Cantwell, Alaska last night. Ledvina noted the coronal mass ejection was very powerful and helped push the aurora borealis far south.
NASA says wind conditions in Alaska will play a key role in knowing when to launch.
According to the release, “Both teams will track the auroras via ground-based cameras at the launch site and at the down-range observatory in Venetie, Alaska, about 130 miles to the northeast along the rockets’ trajectory.”
Aristotle made one of first scientific accounts of auroras in the 4th century, according to NASA. Some scientists and historians credit astronomer Galileo for coining the term Aurora Borealis.