Northern lights visible in some parts of Canada after solar storm

Beautiful northern lights put on a show across much of Canada on Friday night, even in the South, thanks to the doubleimpact from solar plasma hitting the Earth.

The combined effect "should light up the skies pretty good over Canada," predictedWilliam Murtagh, program co-ordinator for the NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center in Boulder, Colo., and he was right.

However, worries that the flares could cause some GPS, electrical grid and radio disruptions proved unfounded.

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Two eruptions from solar storms last week blasted plasma from the surface of the sun toward the Earth a phenomenon known as a coronal mass ejection or CME.

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The first blast, which was smaller, hit the Earth Thursday night, generating a small geomagnetic storm in the atmosphere, the Space Weather Prediction Center reported. Such storms are caused by charged particles in the solar plasma interacting with the Earth's magnetic field. That excites nitrogen and oxygen in the Earth's upper atmosphere, sometimes generating northern lights or auroras beautiful moving curtains of red and green light in the night sky.

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Murtagh told CBC News he saw some photos of auroras spotted Thursday night in Minnesota. But more impressive ones were expected Friday night.

That's because the second blast from a powerful X-class flare is scheduled to smack the Earth Friday, and its effect will combine with that of the previous storm.

"It always gets our attention just that little bit more, when we see two or more," Murtaghsaid. "But if you've got another coming right behind this, it prolongs the storm and the dynamics can be such that the second impacts can be quite strong."

The geomagnetic storm level tonight is expected to hit level 3, classified as strong, on a scale of 1 to 5, where 5 is the highest. At northern latitudes, it may even hit level 4 severe Murtaghsuggests.

The last time we saw this intensity level in a geomagnetic storm was in June 2013, despite the fact that we are at the peak of the sun's 11-year solar cycle.

Risk to power grids

Besides generating beautiful auroras, such storms candamagepower infrastructure a series of powerful solar storms in October 2003 damaged power grids in both Europe and Africa, Murtaghnoted.

Power grid operators have already been warned about this week's storms and are taking precautions.

"It's very manageable," Murtaghsaid.

He added that GPS navigation may also be disrupted, along with compass readings, but hikers and geocachingenthusiasts need notworry, as the problems shouldnt last very long.

"It just may be a bit of a nuisance," he said.

While an event like this hasn't happened in more than a year,Murtaghnoted that in the longterm, solar flares like the ones that erupted this week aren't that unusual. They typically happen 100 times over each 11-year solar cycle, although only a small number of them are aimed at the Earth.

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In any case, that's in the long term, he said. Even though we're at the peak of the current solar cycle, this cycle has been "unusually quiet," he added, "so we haven't seen too many of these."

Given that, you might want to take advantage the show this weekend.