FORT WAYNE, Ind. (NEXSTAR) – Skywatchers across at least 18 states may have the chance to see the northern lights early Wednesday as a coronal mass ejection impacts Earth. That does include here in northeast Indiana and northwest Ohio…
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NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center has been tracking a coronal mass ejection, or CME, since Sunday. As of Tuesday afternoon, signs are pointing this CME has arrived.
“This raises our measure of confidence in a geomagnetic storm,” the SWPC wrote on X . Ahead of the CME’s expected arrival, the SWPC issued a G3 geomagnetic storm watch through Wednesday, citing the arrival of not just one, but potentially “multiple coronal mass ejections.”
What is a CME?
The northern lights appear when coronal mass ejections are hurled out by the sun, sending plasma and magnetic material to collide with Earth’s magnetic field. Particles flow along the currents to the poles, interacting with oxygen and nitrogen in the atmosphere.
Those interactions form excess energy , which appear as bursts of light we know as the aurora. The gases involved and where the action is happening determine the colors that we see …