Chance to see the Aurora Borealis tonight
A geomagnetic storm will increase our chance to see the Aurora Borealis (Northern Lights) tonight in all of Missouri. The best location is in a dark sky, away from city lights. The good news is that we expect clear skies tonight although fog will develop later tonight across the Ozarks.
The best viewing time is 3 hours around the midnight hour but anytime after sunset and before sunrise it is possible to view the Northern Lights. Tonight the moon rises at 11:06 PM with 58% of the Moon’s visible disk visible. So the best time to look is before the moon gets high in the sky since the moonlight will wash out the dark sky.
A geomagnetic storm is a major disturbance of Earth’s magnetosphere that occurs when there is a very efficient exchange of energy from the solar wind into the space environment surrounding Earth. These storms result from variations in the solar wind that produces major changes in the currents, plasmas, and fields in Earth’s magnetosphere. The solar wind conditions that are effective for creating geomagnetic storms are sustained (for several to many hours) periods of high-speed solar wind, and most importantly, a southward directed solar wind magnetic field (opposite the direction of Earth’s field) at the dayside of the magnetosphere. This condition is effective for transferring energy from the solar wind into Earth’s magnetosphere.
