(WWJ) — Earlier this spring we were treated to quite the event up in the sky when parts of Metro Detroit saw more than 99% totality for the April 8 solar eclipse.
Now we may be treated to another solar event this weekend, as all of Michigan could see the Northern Lights on Friday night.
The Space Weather Prediction Center has issued a geomagnetic storm watch for Friday night into early Saturday morning.
While Michigan’s Upper Peninsula is no stranger to seeing the aurora borealis, Mike Narlock, head of astronomy at the Cranbrook Institute for Science, tells WWJ we’ve got a pretty good shot at seeing the natural phenomenon, even this far south.
“If the weather holds — and that’s always a gamble for us here in Michigan — but if it’s clear out, we could see a lot of auroral activity,” Narlock told WWJ’s Luke Sloan on Thursday.
Narlock says over the last few days an area on the sun surrounding a really large sunspot “has been throwing particles out into the solar system,” otherwise known as coronal mass ejections (CMEs).
“Basically it’s tons and tons and tons of charged particles. And when these charged particles hit the earth’s magnetic fields, they sort of follow the magnetic field lines toward the North Pole and towards the South Pole and as they move along their paths, they sort of give up their energy,” Narlock said.
“And we perceive that as basically shimmering curtains of light,” he said. “Sometimes it’s green, sometimes it’s red, sometimes it’s blue, depending on where and how much energy these particles have.”
The National Weather Service says the Northern Lights will likely be visible over many of the northern states and some of the lower Midwest, stretching all the way west to Oregon.
While auroral activity has been seen as far south as Texas in the midst of strong magnetic storms, Narlock said it’s pretty rare for the Lower Peninsula to see it.
“And this particular storm has been upgraded over the past day or so from a moderate to severe storm because the sun spot just keeps throwing stuff out into the solar system. So, we could be up for a really visually spectacular view this weekend,” Narlock said.
“To be honest, though, they probably happen more often than people think here in Michigan, it’s just that we’re surrounded by big cities with big lights that brighten up the nighttime sky and to be honest a lot of people don’t spend a lot of time looking up where all of this cool stuff is happening,” he said. “So when you get an opportunity to take it, you sure wanna take it. I’m sure the folks up in the UP are far more experienced with seeing the aurora than us down here in the Lower Peninsula, just because they have darker skies to contend with.”
The best way to see the Northern Lights, according to Narlock, is to go somewhere dark with minimal light pollution and “basically just sit down and wait.”