Northern Lights: what should you expect tonight?

Dhe northern lights could light up the Belgian sky during the night from Saturday to Sunday. The phenomenon, very rare in our regions, could occur following one of the largest solar flares of the last 25 years.

Concretely, two coronal mass ejections, or enormous clouds of solar plasma, are approaching the Earth and should collide with our planet. But “we do not know whether it will be a direct impact or a grazing shot,” said Sami Solanki, director of the German Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, on Friday. dpa agency.

One of the ejections should reach Earth on Saturday morning, the second in the evening, announcing the Northern Lights. These coronal mass ejections, upon their impact with our planet, can generate geomagnetic storms. According to the American weather agency NOAA, these storms are expected to be category G3. The northern lights visible last May in Belgium were due to a G5 storm, the highest category according to the geomagnetic storm index.

However, it is very difficult to predict how quickly and with what power these solar ejections will reach the Earth. This information will only be known about half an hour before the plasma particles reach our planet, when satellites will be able to measure them at a distance of about a million kilometers. We must also hope for clear skies to best observe these light phenomena.