Cookies policy

In Brief

9 December 2015

Northern Lights now appear in central Europe and much of US

Northern Lights now appear in central Europe and much of US

(Image: Tommy Eliassen/SPL/Getty)

THINK you have to trudge to Sweden or Alaska to see the northern lights? Well, not this year.

Typically only seen near the North Pole, the aurora borealis has been lighting up the skies over northern US states and central Europe in recent months. Now citizen science project Aurorasaurus is making it easier to know when to run outside to take in the spectacular sky show by combining Twitter data, peer verification tools and a real-time alert system.

This year has been a stormy one for the sun, which is at the peak phase of its activity cycle. As a result, its belches of geomagnetic radiation have been particularly potent. That solar wind interacts with Earth’s atmosphere to create colourful displays near the poles.


Aurora predictions are based on a model developed by the NOAA, using satellite data on solar wind intensity. But citizen reports show that this year the aurora is visible much further south than the model suggests.

Aurorasaurus combines these sightings with NOAA’s system to provide more accurate predictions. “This is the first time the citizen science observations are being used in a concerted effort to track the aurora in real time,” says Kasha Patel, who worked on Aurorasaurus.

Beyond alerting enthusiasts, the data will be used to better understand how the interaction between the solar wind and Earth’s magnetic field causes the aurora.