A view of the aurora borealis will once again be visible in the Austin area tonight, the National Weather Service confirmed.
“Aurora forecasting is a little tricky,” National Weather Service meteorologist Harrison Tran said. “But we are seeing an increase in activity in the Earth’s atmosphere … so we are at least on track to see some additional aurora tonight, and it could be as intense as yesterday.”
Tran said the view of the northern lights in Texas is thanks to a recent series of “coronal mass ejections,” which are sudden bursts of solar material that get sent from the solar surface into space. Those bursts are not always aimed toward Earth, but when they are, the Earth’s magnetic field guides those high-energy particles toward the atmosphere, mainly toward the North and South Poles…