northern lights?

Question

LIGHTS IN THE NIGHT SKY CIRCULAR AND MOVING AMONG THE NIGHT CLOUDS

Answer 1

CIRCULAR lights moving among night CLOUDS. This sounds to me like you are actually seeing the effects of spotlights that are used to bring attention to special events. They can easily appear to light up the nightsky for miles around as well as light up low clouds. An example of typical spotlights that might cause this effect: http://www.facets.org/images/spotlights.jpg

The biggest clue would be how fast were the lights moving? If they were moving very fast, they were most likely not the northern lights. Northern lights only move quickly when they are very active and from a strong display in your area.

Also, were the lights coloured at all? If they were just white, they were most likely not northern lights and spotlights as I said. While auroras can be white and many other colours as well, they are predominately green. Northern lights might also appear white if a display was extremely weak, so much so that the human eye could not perceive the colour. I would say that were not the case here though.

Where you're located and the time you saw the lights would also be a clue. While there has been some aurora activity lately, it has not been very strong or long lasting. Unless you live in areas like Canada or the northern tier of the United States, what you saw were not northern lights.

Answer 2

AURORA BOREALIS (NORTHERN LIGHTS)
The Aurora Borealis (commonly referred to as the Northern Lights) are the result of interactions between the Sun and Earth's outer atmosphere. The Aurora Australis is the southern hemisphere counterpart to the Aurora Borealis.

What Causes the Aurora? The Sun emits electrically-charged particles called ions, which correspondingly move away from the Sun in a stream of plasma (ionized gas) known as the solar wind. As the plasma comes in contact with the Earth's magnetic field, the ions will be agitated into moving around the Earth. Some of the ions become trapped and will consequently interact with the Earth's ionosphere (an average of 60-80 miles above the surface), causing the ions to glow. This is the same principal as how a neon sign lights up. As electrons pass through the neon tubing, they glow, thus producing the light in a neon sign.

The Aurora are constantly changing and moving in streams of light or curtains, because the process of how the Sun's ionized gas interacts with the Earth's magnetic field is very dynamic. Although harmless to life on Earth, the Aurora can cause power disruptions in satellite communications and in radio/TV broadcasts.

Aurora Displays: The northern latitudes (or southern latitudes in the southern hemisphere) see the greatest occurrence of the Aurora. In the northern hemisphere, there is a 50% or greater chance of seeing Aurora roughly between the latitudes of 55 to 80 degrees north. This means in general that in these latitudes, the Aurora should occur on at least half of the nights throughout the year. However, this also varies. Aurora displays usually increase during times of the solar maximum. They also usually show a greater frequency during the winter months, where the nights are longer and the skies generally void of haze. Although most common in the northern latitudes, the Aurora have been occasionally seen south of 35 degrees north latitude which encompasses the far southern United States. Displays this far south can occur when a large coronal mass ejection from the Sun creates a huge geomagnetic storm in the Earth's outer atmosphere. This occurred on the night of November 5th and 6th, 2001 where amazing Aurora displays were seen as far south as Texas, Arizona and San Diego, CA

An NWS employee formerly in Rapid City SD, took this spectacular picture of an Aurora Borealis display on November 5th, 2001. The Aurora this night was seen over many parts of the Northern Hemisphere north of the tropics, courtesy of an unusually large geomagnetic storm. (See Link Below For Photo)

Answer 3

I've seen the northern lights in Michigan several times in the early winter or early spring.

Here is a web sites that will give you more information when you may be able to view them:

http://sec.noaa.gov/pmap/

http://www.geo.mtu.edu/weather/aurora/

Hope this helps you

Answer 4

And the question is? I saw them years ago in Maine. We stayed up most of the night to see them. Look it up and read all about them. Very beautiful and very wonderful experience.

Answer 5

There has been quite a bit of solar activity this week, so probably yes. Check out

www.spaceweather.com

for more info.

Answer 6

Alex, what is Aurora borealis?