One of the things I wanted so badly to experience after moving to North Dakota were the Northern Lights aka the Aurora Borealis. Like most people I have seen the beautiful images posted all over the web and assumed these light displays were quite common, but I was very wrong about that. In seven years I had only seen them once and it was not a very spectacular display. But, in the last two months we have experienced two Northern Lights occurrences and both were well worth the being cold and staying up way too late. And the display last Sunday was absolutely breath taking.
If you are hoping to catch a glimpse of the Northern Lights the local US National Weather Service is pretty good about sending out notifications via social media that the conditions are good for them being visible in your location and apps like Aurora Forecast are helpful, but that doesn’t always mean you’ll see them. In general the apps will give you an idea of the KP-index and the the percent of the potential visibility on the horizon and overhead. To get a little nerdy, the Kp-index describes the disturbance of the Earth’s magnetic field caused by the solar wind. The faster the solar wind blows, the greater the turbulence. The index ranges from 0, for low activity, to 9, which means there is an intense geomagnetic storm going on. On most nights when the Lights are visible in our neck of the woods the KP-index is at least 4 and we usually only have them visible on the horizon. On this particular night the KP-index was an 8 and the percentage on the horizon was 100% and 77% overhead!
To have the best chance of seeing the lights we headed a north a few miles out of town, just to get out of the city light pollution. We’ve found a spot just of the highway were there isn’t much obstructing our view and when it’s dark, it’s dark. On this night we arrived just as the twilight was disappearing and had expected to immediately begin seeing the Lights, but nope we had to wait nearly an hour before they became visible. One common misconception is that with the naked eye you can see the greens, blues, violets, and red and although it’s possible it doesn’t happen that often. If you are seeing any color it’s most likely going to be the yellow-green and or a grey-white streaking. The best way to see the full spectrum of colors is by using a camera. I swear I’m going to practice setting up my good camera with the right settings, so I can use it in the future, but for now most phones have a night setting or you can download an app to help you capture the beauty of the night sky. By 10 PM we were just in awe as the Lights danced in front of us and overhead for well over an hour. I’m so thankful for our Monday afternoon Chiropractic visits! I honestly woke up the next morning with my neck being sore from looking up so long. And actually Monday morning everyone but my husband arose later than usual after being out so late. It’s mornings likes this that I’m grateful for homeschooling and being able to change or plans to be a little lighter to accommodate our family shenanigans.
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