Massive Aurora Displays Posed for a Repeat on June 6 (2024)

Excitement accompanied the numerous auroras seen a few weeks ago. The good news is that the incredibly powerful sunspot group that created the Northern Lights will appear again for a few nights on either side of Thursday, June 6. This is also the night of the new Moon, so we may see more wondrous displays. Get the facts from astronomer BobBerman.

The Record-Setting May 2024Auroras

On May 10, the colorful, shimmering displays of light called auroras appeared in many places they’d never been seen before. Here at the Almanac, we were bowled over by the hundreds of reader photos on our Almanac Facebook page, and they were truly stunning, even with a basic phone camera.

In the U.S., this magical light show appeared as far south as Florida. This is highly unusual as Northern Lights are usually more prevalent in the far north, near thepoles.

Further, instead of the more common green colors, many viewers saw unusual pink and reddish colors! This was related to the very high altitude of the far-spreading NorthernLights.

The June 6 AuroraForecast

The aurora display across the globe on May 10 was primarily due to a super-big sunspot, which had the catchy name AR13664 but has now been renamed AR13697.

This sunspot—essentially a massive storm on the Sun—was close to the center of the Sun when it was facing Earth and flinging out large expulsions of plasma and magnetic field from the Sun’scorona.

Since May 10, the sunspot rotated out of sight (the Sun rotates every 27 days), but it’s about to emerge again on Thursday, June6.

For two to three nights on either side of June 6, we may again see a Northern Lights show at low latitudes across North America (and Europe). Even better, June 6 is the month’s new Moon, so the light show will be easier tosee.

How do we know if early June will bring another stunning aurora display across the world? There are several factors at play. Let’s get into the violent details of “space weather” to see what all of this reallymeans.

Factor 1: The Sun’sCycle

Essentially, a whole lot of physical violence created these record-setting displays a few weeks ago. The Sun is wildly stormy, and we feel its effects on Earth. Scientists use the term “Space Weather” to describe the dramatic emissions from theSun.

Why is the Sun so stormy right now? The Sun’s activity level famously gets stronger and weaker in a roughly 11-year solar cycle. Experts believe we’re heading towards the peak of the current cycle, number 25. See the predictions of when Solar Cycle 25 will end. A very active sun cycle results in more visibleauroras.

Factor 2: A Sunspot With Massive CMEs

Sunspots like AR13697 appear as dark spots on the Sun’s surface but form when intense magnetic fields deep within the Sun well up to thesurface.

Without going into more scientific explanation, know that the magnetic fields sometimes get all twisted and this produces extreme violence, such as flares, which spew energy and plasma (broken bits of atoms) into theirsurroundings.

Violent flares erupt from the Sun; these are labeled M-class. Super-violent ones are labeled X-class. A month ago, we had a whole series of X-classflares.

But those can still be small potatoes compared to the even more violent events called CMEs, or Coronal Mass Ejections, where 10 billion tons of sun-stuff can be blasted off like an enormous shotgun discharge, aimed in onedirection.

Factor 3: Direction of the Solar Flares and CMEs

Solar wind is a more-or-less steady stream of Sun debris that typically sweeps past Earth at around 300 miles a second. Each cubic centimeter or sugar-cube piece of space typically contains five solar wind particles. But flares, and especially CMEs, enormously multiply the density of material hitting us, as well as the speed ofimpact.

And wait, this is where the story’s greatest drama is just beginning. The solar material hits Earth’s magnetosphere, our Earth’s magneticfield.

Factor 4: Aligned MagneticFields

Or maybe it doesn’t. If the field’s north and south poles happen to be aligned to match Earth’s, the solar material will not interact with us at all. It’ll just keep going outward, perhaps to harass other planets and maybe create the huge auroras we see on Jupiter andSaturn.

But if the CME’s material’s magnetism is oriented opposite to Earth’s field, then it comes right on in to interact with us and possibly create damage to electronics and satellites, threaten electrical transmission facilities and pipelines, and concoct gorgeousauroras.

Oxygen’s most common color emission is green (at 557.7 nanometers wavelength if you love physics and want to know such things.) That’s good luck for humans since that happens to be the tint where our retinas are most sensitive to faint light. So green auroras are the tuna-on-white of this whole aurora business. But high-altitude oxygen tends to create red (at 640 nanometers if you insist on knowing. That’s the same shade of red as most laserpointers.)

And that’s the aurora story. We first need a huge local solar magnetic field, yielding spots, and then flares or CMEs. These storms never sit on the Sun’s equator, not very near itspoles.

Bottom-Line on June 6Auroras

1. The super-big spot (AR13697) will need to rotate back to the place just to the right of the Sun’s center.
2. Then, the sunspot must hurl explosive detritus intospace.
3. Then, the Parker Spiral guides to Earth (after 2 ½ days oftravel).
4. Then, one final thing: We have to hope its own magnetic field is aligned opposite to Earth’s, with the south pointing up. This is a little complicated, but the point it…

We won’t know this until it’s almost here. That’s why aurora predictions sometimesfail.