--- title: The Northern Lights Were Visible Again as Solar Activity Increases | TIME description: Another in a series of unusually strong solar storms hitting Earth produced stunning skies full of colors known as the Northern Lights or Aurora Borealis farther south than normal, including into parts of the United States and United Kingdom. Columbia University Astronomy Prof. David Helfand explains the breathtaking phenomenon. canonical: https://time.com/video/URfGXhxL/ og:title: The Northern Lights Were Visible Again as Solar Activity Increases og:description: Another in a series of unusually strong solar storms hitting Earth produced stunning skies full of colors known as the Northern Lights or Aurora Borealis farther south than normal, including into parts of the United States and United Kingdom. Columbia University Astronomy Prof. David Helfand explains the breathtaking phenomenon. og:url: https://time.com/video/URfGXhxL/ og:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/URfGXhxL/poster.jpg?width=720 og:type: video.other twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: The Northern Lights Were Visible Again as Solar Activity Increases twitter:description: Another in a series of unusually strong solar storms hitting Earth produced stunning skies full of colors known as the Northern Lights or Aurora Borealis farther south than normal, including into parts of the United States and United Kingdom. Columbia University Astronomy Prof. David Helfand explains the breathtaking phenomenon. twitter:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/URfGXhxL/poster.jpg?width=720 --- * Science # The Northern Lights Were Visible Again as Solar Activity Increases > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ## Video: The Northern Lights Were Visible Again as Solar Activity Increases [Watch (HLS stream): The Northern Lights Were Visible Again as Solar Activity Increases](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/URfGXhxL.m3u8) (1:28)  _Published 2024-10-11. Another in a series of unusually strong solar storms hitting Earth produced stunning skies full of colors known as the Northern Lights or Aurora Borealis farther south than normal, including into parts of the United States and United Kingdom. Columbia University Astronomy Prof. David Helfand explains the breathtaking phenomenon._ --- Oct 11, 2024 9:20 PM UTC --- ## More From This Series [All Videos](https://time.com/video/) [Stunning Aurora Borealis Over Manitoba’s Night Sky](/video/Fru6trsL/) ### Stunning Aurora Borealis Over Manitoba’s Night Sky [Watch: Geminid Meteor Shower Peaks With the Aurora Borealis](/video/6vx4vykB/) ### Watch: Geminid Meteor Shower Peaks With the Aurora Borealis [Northern Lights in Iceland](/video/DBr1vkEb/) ### Northern Lights in Iceland --- ## Transcript The main effect we get most of the time from the standard sort of modest sized solar flares, is the northern lights, the Aurora Borealis, and the southern lights, the Aurora Australis. Which are the colorful dancing lights you see if you're in far Northern Alaska or Canada. Solar maximum means the sun. It's most active. It's generating the most magnetic storms on its surface and the most ejections of high energy particles towards the earth that has follows an 11 year cycle. We don't know why it's 11 years. So the sun is, in other words, brightening in the sense that it's total energy output, not the part we can see, but the total energy output is slightly higher. By close to a tenth of a percent than it was five years ago. The result of this is that the sun is rotating. The sun rotates once around on its axis in 26 days. And beneath the surface is rotating even faster. And the sun, of course, is very hot, so all the particles are charged, and charged rotating particles generate magnetic fields. So these magnetic fields are generated below the surface of the sun. They also drive a solar wind, which is a wind of particles. So that's like the wind outside that spreads out throughout the solar system. And they are, among other things, responsible for the northern lights, the Aurora Borealis, because when those charged particles hit the earth's magnetic field, they spiral around the field and crash into the north magnetic pole, and that excites the air molecules to glow red and green and other colors. ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"The Northern Lights Were Visible Again as Solar Activity Increases","description":"Another in a series of unusually strong solar storms hitting Earth produced stunning skies full of colors known as the Northern Lights or Aurora Borealis farther south than normal, including into parts of the United States and United Kingdom.\nColumbia University Astronomy Prof. David Helfand explains the breathtaking phenomenon.","thumbnailUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/URfGXhxL/poster.jpg?width=720","uploadDate":"2024-10-11T20:24:59.000Z","contentUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/URfGXhxL.m3u8","embedUrl":"https://time.com/video/URfGXhxL/","duration":"PT1M28S","potentialAction":{"@type":"SeekToAction","target":"https://time.com/video/URfGXhxL/?jw_start={seek_to_second_number}","startOffset-input":"required name=seek_to_second_number"}} ```