Several strong flares have occurred on the Sun, sending large amounts of plasma towards Earth. This means that the northern lights may appear in the sky next night. “These may be the best conditions for observing the aurora borealis over Poland for several or a dozen years,” wrote Karol Wójcicki, author of the blog “With your head in the stars.”
Several flares occurred on the Sun, some of them reaching the highest class X. Many of these flares generated coronal mass ejections (CMEs) heading towards Earth. The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reported that a magnetic storm of category G4, i.e. very strong, is possible. It is this light that may cause the aurora borealis to appear in the Polish sky the next night.
“These may be the best conditions for observing the aurora borealis over Poland for a dozen or so years, and perhaps even for about 20 years. I'm not joking,” wrote Karol Wójcicki, popularizer of astronomy and author of the blog “With your head in the stars,” wrote on social media.
Aurora borealis over Poland
As Karol Wójcicki wrote, the northern lights will be easily observed from all over the country, and in the form of a subtle glow even from the suburbs of cities. The astronomy popularizer added that it will also cover the Czech Republic, Slovakia and even Hungary.
– It is expected that all CMEs that left the AR3664 region on the last day will reach us in the form of one geomagnetic storm on May 10-11 – said Helena Ciechowska from the Heliogeophysical Forecasting Center of the Polish Academy of Sciences.
Coronal mass ejection
A coronal mass ejection (CME) is a large, often several times larger than the Earth, highly magnetized cloud of plasma that is ejected at high speed into interplanetary space. This is one of the most important factors shaping space weather.
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