Stargazers in New Jersey — and many states across the nation — who woke up early Saturday morning were treated to a dazzling sky show as a powerful solar storm caused the colorful Northern Lights to glow in places that rarely see them.
From Egg Harbor City in Atlantic County to Metuchen in Middlesex County and towns up north in Bergen County, scores of skywatchers took to social media to post photos they snapped of this rare event.
In case you slept late and missed it, there is some good news: The Space Weather Prediction Center says the Northern Lights may be visible in many areas of the United States again Saturday night into early Sunday morning because of the “extreme” geomagnetic storm that has occurred high up in the atmosphere.
The bad news: The agency says there’s a possibility the solar storm could disrupt communications satellites or power grids, so some GPS systems could be briefly interrupted.
The agency said there have been some “reports of power grid irregularities and degradation to high-frequency communications and GPS” from the solar storm that was flaring Friday night into early Saturday. Additional details about those disruptions weren’t available Saturday morning.
The solar storm was classified as G5, which is considered rare and extreme, and believed to be the strongest solar flareup since October 2003.
This weekend’s solar storm poses a risk for high-voltage transmission lines for power grids, not the electrical lines ordinarily found in people’s homes, NOAA space weather forecaster Shawn Dahl said.
Satellites also could be affected, which in turn could disrupt navigation and communication services here on Earth. An extreme geomagnetic storm in 2003, for example, took out power in Sweden and damaged power transformers in South Africa.
Even when the storm is over, signals between GPS satellites and ground receivers could be scrambled or lost, according to NOAA. But there are so many navigation satellites that any outages should not last long, one expert noted.
The sun has produced strong solar flares since Wednesday, resulting in at least seven outbursts of plasma. Each eruption, known as a coronal mass ejection, can contain billions of tons of plasma and magnetic field from the sun’s outer atmosphere, or corona.
The flares seem to be associated with a sunspot that’s 16 times the diameter of Earth, NOAA said. It is all part of the solar activity ramping up as the sun approaches the peak of its 11-year cycle.
NASA said the storm posed no serious threat to the seven astronauts aboard the International Space Station. The biggest concern is the increased radiation levels, and the crew could move to a better shielded part of the station if necessary, according to Rob Steenburgh, a scientist with NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center.
Increased radiation also could threaten some of NASA’s science satellites.
Extremely sensitive instruments will be turned off, if necessary, to avoid damage, said Antti Pulkkinen, director of the space agency’s heliophysics science division.
In New Jersey, increasing clouds Saturday night and the possibility of scattered rain showers could block the view of the Northern Lights.
The National Weather Service said some breaks in the clouds are not out of the question.
“I don’t think tonight is going to be a great viewing opportunity,” meteorologist Patrick O’Hara told lehighvalleylive.com Saturday morning from the weather service’s regional forecast office in New Jersey.
However, clearing skies are forecast Sunday into Monday as high pressure moves into the region, so “there’s a better chance for that period,” O’Hara said.
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The Associated Press and LehighValleyLive.com staff writer Kurt Bresswein contributed to this report.
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Len Melisurgo may be reached at LMelisurgo@njadvancemedia.com or on X at @LensReality.
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