Celestial Sensation

An unusually strong solar storm blanketed the Earth in the early morning hours of Saturday, May 11, producing colorful light shows across the entire Northern Hemisphere. In the United States, the northern lights were visible as far south as Alabama and Northern California, as witnessed in this compelling photo taken by the National Park Service along the Rim Drive at Crater Lake National Park located in Southern Oregon.

The sun has produced strong solar flares since Wednesday, May 8, resulting in at least seven outbursts of plasma, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The flares seem to associated with a sunspot that's 16 times the diameter of the Earth, all part of solar activity ramping up as the sun approaches the peak of its 11-year cycle. The light show made great viewing for photographers and skywatchers alike.

Known as auroras, the northern lights (aurora borealis) and southern lights (aurora australia) are a natural lighting display of dynamic patterns of brilliant colors that appear as curtains, rays, spirals or flickers covering the entire sky. Most commonly seen in the Arctic and Antarctic regions, the recent geomagnetic storms have pushed to aurora borealis much farther south as the sun approaches its solar maximum.

This type of storm allows for even more opportunities for viewing as the sun reaches the peak of its cycle, which has been more active than experts had originally predicted, and it appears more of these impacts will extend into 2025 and 2026. The bottom photo, courtesy of Lake Wenatchee Fire and Rescue, shows the northern lights in Washington over Dirtyface Peak and Lake Wenatchee under a full moon setting in the west.