Why are we seeing the Northern Lights so often lately?
What used to be a once-in-a-lifetime event - or a bucket list trip to the Arctic circle – has become a more common sighting in the last couple of years.
On Thursday night, the stunning colours of the Northern Lights were visible once again even to the naked eye across much of the US.
Experts say the Northern Lights, or Aurora Borealis, are more visible right now due to the sun being at what astronomers call the “maximum” of its 11-year solar cycle.
What this means is that roughly every 11 years, at the peak of this cycle, the sun’s magnetic poles flip, and the sun transitions from sluggish to active and stormy. On Earth, that’d be like if the North and South Poles swapped places every decade.
“At its quietest, the sun is at solar minimum; during solar maximum, the sun blazes with bright flares and solar eruptions,” according to Nasa, the US space agency.
The solar eruptions that caused the latest round of sparkling lights in the night sky began on 8 October, when a huge sunspot erupted on the sun's surface 93 million miles (150 million kilometres) away.
