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The National Weather Service said that a severe geomagnetic storm alert was in effect Thursday night, with the northern lights visible as far south as Alabama and Northern California. Cameras operated by PG&E near Mt. Shasta recorded auroras just after 9 p.m., and a passenger on a flight from Alaska to Washington was able to capture video of the northern lights, according to local media outlets.

On Nov. 3 a solar storm caused a temporary crack in Earth's magnetic field. The resulting hole enabled energetic particles to penetrate deep into the planet's atmosphere and set off extremely rare pink auroras. An explosion of extremely rare pink auroras recently lit up the night sky above Norway after a solar storm slammed into Earth and ripped a hole in the planet's magnetic field. The breach enabled highly energetic solar particles to penetrate deeper into the atmosphere than normal, triggering the unusual colored lights. The stunning light show was spotted Nov. 3 by a tour group led by Markus...

STEVE (short for "strong thermal velocity enhancement") is a long, thin line of hot gas that slices through the sky for hundreds of miles. The hot air inside STEVE can blaze at more than 5,500 degrees Fahrenheit (3,000 degrees Celsius) and move roughly 500 times faster than the air on each side of it, satellite observations have shown. Whereas the northern lights occur when charged solar particles bash into molecules in Earth's upper atmosphere, STEVE appears much lower in the sky, in a region called the subauroral zone. That likely means solar particles aren't directly responsible for STEVE, Live Science...

The explosion comes courtesy of a dead sunspot called AR2987.... The sunspot explosion released loads of energy in the form of radiation, which also led to a coronal mass ejection (CME) — explosive balls of solar material — both of which could spur more intense northern lights in Earth's upper atmosphere. The material in that CME is likely to impact Earth on April 14... The idea of a "dead" sunspot is more poetic than scientific, said Philip Judge, a solar physicist at the High Altitude Observatory at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), but the convection of the sun...

Explanation: What drives auroras on Saturn? To help find out, scientists have sorted through hundreds of infrared images of Saturn taken by the Cassini spacecraft for other purposes, trying to find enough aurora images to correlate changes and make movies. Once made, some movies clearly show that Saturnian auroras can change not only with the angle of the Sun, but also as the planet rotates. Furthermore, some auroral changes appear related to waves in Saturn's magnetosphere likely caused by Saturn's moons. Pictured here, a false-colored image taken in 2007 shows Saturn in three bands of infrared light. The rings reflect...

The visible surface of the Sun, or the photosphere, is around 6,000°C. But a few thousand kilometers above it – a small distance when we consider the size of the Sun – the solar atmosphere, also called the corona, is hundreds of times hotter, reaching a million degrees celsius or higher. This spike in temperature, despite the increased distance from the Sun’s main energy source, has been observed in most stars, and represents a fundamental puzzle that astrophysicists have mulled over for decades. In 1942, the Swedish scientist Hannes Alfvén proposed an explanation. He theorized that magnetized waves of plasma...

Since 2015, a mysterious purple light in the sky has baffled NASA. The space agency has dubbed the strange light ‘Steve’, but despite having an ordinary name, the light is extremely complex. Now, NASA has shared a stunning photo of Steve and the Milky Way, snapped over Childs Lake, Canada in 2017. The beautiful image was shot by photographer Krista Trinder, and has been featured as NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day. NASA said: “What's creating these long glowing streaks in the sky? No one is sure. “Known as Strong Thermal Emission Velocity Enhancements (STEVEs), these luminous light-purple sky ribbons...

van Vagner, a Russian astronaut with the International Space Station (ISS), claims he captured the sight of five unusual lights, which some are calling a UFO, on a video that has gone viral. “Cosmonaut Ivan Vagner recently captured footage of the auroras over the Antarctic. ‘5 objects’ appeared in the the time-lapse according to Vagner in a tweet. The imagery was sent to Roscosmos for analysis,” Video From Space wrote on YouTube, sharing the video. Vagner first revealed the video on Twitter. He wrote, “Space guests, or how I filmed the new time-lapse. The peak of aurora borealis when passing...

Nearly a millennium and a half ago, red light streaked across the night sky over Japan. Witnesses compared it to the tail of a pheasant -- it appeared as a fan of beautiful red feathers stretched across the sky. Since the event, scientists have studied the witness accounts written in the year 620 A.D. and speculated about what the cosmic phenomenon could have actually been. Now, researchers from The Graduate University for Advanced Studies may have found the answer... "It is the oldest Japanese astronomical record of a 'red sign,'" said Ryuho Kataoka, a researcher with the Department of Polar...

By watching for a special kind of flare, astronomers have identified the fingerprints of an Earth-size planet orbiting a distant star.The planet orbits its host star, a dim “M dwarf,” just at the edge of the habitable zone — the region where liquid water could exist. Jupiter’s moon Io — the solar system’s most volcanic world — has inspired a new way to find distant exoplanets. As the moon orbits Jupiter, it tugs on the planet’s magnetic field, generating bright auroras in Jupiter’s atmosphere. Even if we couldn’t see Io itself, the enormous auroras, pulsing to the beat of...

Auroras paint the sky around the poles when the sun is particularly active, flinging highly charged particles at Earth's atmosphere. Scientists once thought that the gorgeous events were mirror images, but to their surprise, displays at the north and south don't precisely match. ... It all comes down to Earth's magnetic tail, which is created by interactions between our planet and the sun. Those interactions begin with Earth's magnetic field, which scientists believe springs from the innards swirling through Earth's core and creating an electrical charge. Magnetic fields... create invisible magnetic field lines arcing between the North and South Poles...

Have you ever wanted to see auroras, the rippling lights that sometimes paint the heavens with unearthly blues or greens and make you feel like you're in a van Gogh painting? If you live in a northern U.S. state, Tuesday might be your chance. Residents in some parts of at least 15 states across the country may be able to see the awe-inspiring phenomenon, The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said on Monday. "The further north you are -- say, upstate New York or upper Michigan -- the more likely you are to see the aurora," Rodney Viereck, a...

Ever since Voyager 2 beamed home spectacular images of the planets in the 1980s, planet-lovers have been hooked on auroras on other planets. Auroras are caused by streams of charged particles like electrons that come from various origins such as solar winds, the planetary ionosphere, and moon volcanism. They become caught in powerful magnetic fields and are channeled into the upper atmosphere, where their interactions with gas particles, such as oxygen or nitrogen, set off spectacular bursts of light.

THERE is a one in eight chance that the Earth will be hit by a huge solar storm by 2020 which could potentially leave the world without Internet, phone service and many more services that modern-day humans rely on. Researchers have warned that there is roughly a 12 per cent chance that a solar storm could smash into Earth by the end of the decade.(emphasis mine) The powerful event would likely be as huge as the Carrington Event, which occurred on 1859. The solar storm which hit 150 years ago was so powerful that its southern auroras could be seen...

Explanation: Early spring in the northern hemisphere is good season for aurora hunters. Near an equinox Earth's magnetic field is oriented to favor interactions with the solar wind that trigger the alluring glow of the northern lights. On March 28/29 the skies over Kaunispää Hill, Lapland, Finland did not disappoint. That night's expansive auroral curtains are captured in this striking panoramic view that covers a full 360 degrees. Local skywatchers were mesmerized by bright displays lasted throughout the dark hours, shimmering with colors easily visible to the naked eye.

Explanation: Jupiter has auroras. Like near the Earth, the magnetic field of our Solar System's largest planet compresses when impacted by a gust of charged particles from the Sun. This magnetic compression funnels charged particles towards Jupiter's poles and down into the atmosphere. There, electrons are temporarily excited or knocked away from atmospheric gases, after which, when de-exciting or recombining with atmospheric ions, auroral light is emitted. The featured illustration portrays the magnificent magnetosphere around Jupiter in action. In the inset image released last month, the Earth-orbiting Chandra X-ray Observatory shows unexpectedly powerful X-ray light emitted by Jovian auroras, depicted...

Explanation: Auroras usually occur high above the clouds. The auroral glow is created when fast-moving particles ejected from the Sun impact the Earth's magnetosphere, from which charged particles spiral along the Earth's magnetic field to strike atoms and molecules high in the Earth's atmosphere. An oxygen atom, for example, will glow in the green light commonly emitted by an aurora after being energized by such a collision. The lowest part of an aurora will typically occur at 100 kilometers up, while most clouds usually exist only below about 10 kilometers. The relative heights of clouds and auroras are shown clearly...

Explanation: It was one of the quietest nights of aurora in weeks. Even so, in northern- Iceland during last November, faint auroras lit up the sky every clear night. The featured 360-degree panorama is the digital fusion of four wide-angle cameras each simultaneously taking 101 shots over 42 minutes. In the foreground is serene Lake Myvatn dotted with picturesque rock formations left over from ancient lava flows. Low green auroras sweep across the sky above showing impressive complexity near the horizon. Stars far in the distance appear to show unusual trails -- as the Earth turned -- because early exposures...

A severe solar storm smacked Earth with a surprisingly big geomagnetic jolt Tuesday, potentially affecting power grids and GPS tracking while pushing the colorful northern lights farther south, federal forecasters said. So far no damage has been reported. Two blasts of magnetic plasma left the sun on Sunday, combined and arrived on Earth about 15 hours earlier and much stronger than expected, said Thomas Berger, director of the Space Weather Prediction Center in Boulder, Colorado. This storm ranks a 4, called severe, on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's 1-to-5 scale for geomagnetic effects. It is the strongest solar storm...

Photo taken March 17, 2015 near Beaverton, Ontario (~80km north of Toronto).