If the sky is clear where you live, head outside tonight for a possible light show.
For the past few nights, the northern lights, or aurora borealis, have been visible across Canada. If you’ve missed them, you’ll get a chance again on Thursday and Friday.
READ MORE: Why do we get the northern lights?
There haven’t been any solar flares or coronal mass ejections from the sun to cause this. Instead, it’s due to a massive coronal hole, an area where the magnetic field opens up, allowing particles to stream out and travel along the solar wind.
When these particles reach Earth, they interact with our magnetic field setting the sky alight with beautiful curtains of green, red and purple.
Earlier this week, people from across the country captured beautiful displays.
It was even seen in the U.S.
Both the U.S. Space Weather Prediction Center and Natural Resources Canada are predicting storm activity on Sept. 29 and 30, with activity dropping afterwards.
READ MORE: How solar storms could leave us in the dark
If you want to try to catch them for yourselves, head outside once the sky gets dark and look north. It may take time for your eyes to adjust to the dark, but after they do, you should be able to see even faint aurora if it’s present.
Another option is to set up a camera on a tripod and set it to a high ISO and take a long-exposure photograph, maybe around 15 seconds. The camera is far more sensitive than the human eye in this set-up.
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