– On average, there are more northern lights around the autumnal equinox and vernal equinox, wrote head of space research Pall Brekke at the Norwegian Space Center in an email to Forskning.no
Brickey explains that during the autumn and spring equinox, Earth's magnetic poles are at right angles to the flow of solar wind, making solar wind and solar storms more effective. It then becomes the ideal location to receive charged particles from the sun and thus generate powerful northern lights.
The northern lights arise when storms of charged particles coming from the Sun hit the magnetic field extending around the Earth. The particles follow the magnetic field inward toward the polar regions. When the sun's particles collide with the air in the atmosphere, they generate the light we can see in the sky.
However, Brickey stresses that there are no guarantees that the northern lights will flare on the equinoxes. Everything depends on the sun.
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The activity of the northern lights follows the sun's activity cycle. Every eleven years, the Sun goes through a period of high activity, called solar maximum, followed by about five years of a quieter period, called solar minimum. During solar maximum there are many solar storms, and during solar minimum there are fewer.
In conclusion, it sparks hope for avid northern lights hunters.
– We are now close to solar maximum, so we have seen an unusual amount of northern lights this winter.
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