Hyde Park residents Meghan Hassett and her husband Max Smith captured the northern lights from Promontory Point Friday, May 10, 2024. | Provided by Meghan Hassett
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicts a slightly weaker display in the sky than on Friday night, with the strongest solar shows likely being visible between 7 and 10 p.m. Saturday and 3 a.m. to 6 a.m. Sunday.
By Violet Miller | Chicago Sun*Times
Chicago got a rare taste of the North Pole this weekend as a solar storm brought dazzling displays of the aurora borealis, better known as the northern lights, to the Chicago area.
And for anyone who missed the dancing neons that shined Friday night into the wee hours of Saturday, don’t despair — they’re expected to be visible again, if not as vibrantly, through Sunday morning.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicted a slightly weaker display in the sky than on Friday night, with the strongest solar shows forecast between 7 and 10 p.m. Saturday and 3 a.m. to 6 a.m. Sunday.
Michelle Nichols, the Adler Planetarium’s director of public observing, said “pinpoint accuracy” wasn’t possible with solar flares and the subsequent cloud of charged particles that sometimes head toward Earth, lighting up the sky. It all depends on the time they arrive, she said.
For best tracking, Nichols suggested following the NOAA’s latest updates as well as Dr. Tony Phillips, an astronomer and self-proclaimed “space weatherman.”
Hunter Miller, an Adler Planetarium employee, captured the northern lights in Crystal Lake Friday. | Provided by Hunter Miller
Saturday night’s electromagnetic activity is expected to be “strongly severe,” perhaps even reaching Friday’s “extreme” levels, according to the NOAA. Nichols called Chicago’s first round of aurora “truly historic.”
“We just had the Super Bowl of solar eclipses,” Nichols said, adding that solar eclipse glasses can be used again to see the sunspot producing the solar storms on the right hand edge of the sun. “What happened last night was the Super Bowl of space weather.”
The phenomenon is only visible in the Chicago area every few decades, and the latest solar activity has powered one of “the best aural displays of the last 500 years,” Nichols said, with the lights being visible as far south as Puerto Rico, which last saw them about a century ago.
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