The northern lights appeared in the sky over the southern cities. Why does it happen

How the northern lights appear

The northern lights, or aurora borealis ("northern dawn"), are a glow that appears in the upper layers of the earth's atmosphere. It is rarely south of the 60th geographic latitude.

The glowing sky effect occurs when a stream of electrically charged particles from the Sun reaches the upper atmosphere. Earth. This happens every day - the solar wind "blows" always, because the processes of electromagnetic interactions are constantly going on in our star.

Charged particles - usually electrons and protons - come into contact with the Earth's magnetic field. This field heterogeneous. The lines of force come out of the north magnetic pole of the planet and enter it in the region of the south. Both poles are close to the geographic ones, but do not completely coincide with them.

Each magnetic pole is a power node with maximum field parameters. That is why it is in these places that the largest part of the charged particles is collected. So-called auroral zones are formed around the nodes -

areaswhere the auroras most often occur.

Solar particles, which are subject to magnetic field lines, collide with atoms and molecules of rarefied atmospheric gases. Such contacts occur in the uppermost layers of the atmosphere. Nitrogen and oxygen atoms, having received a “hit” from solar electrons and protons, ionized. They are in an excited state for a while, and then return to normal.

At the moment of transition of atoms to the usual energy state, energy is released. Part of it turns into light radiation - that is, into a stream of photons. Its waves have different lengths, and therefore - and color.

It is these streams of light that we call the aurora. In the sky arise arcs, narrow and wide stripes, rays, blurry luminous figures of green, sometimes bluish or yellowish, purple and pink hues.

Interestingly, in the Southern Hemisphere, a similar phenomenon is called aurora australis ("dawn of the south"). The mechanism of its formation is the same.

Why you can sometimes see the northern lights even in the south

Our star's magnetic activity changes all the time. There are periods when scientists almost do not observe its signs - spots and flares on the Sun. But every 10–12 years, activity reaches maximum. Powerful flares and coronal mass ejections amplify the flow of the solar wind. Its impact on the magnetosphere of our planet is also increasing. Then we regularly hear about perturbations and storms in the Earth's magnetosphere. During such periods, the northern lights can be seen even in areas far from the Arctic Circle. Peak like this are waitinge.g. in July 2025.

But even during times of minimal activity, the solar wind occurs when coronal holes appear on the surface of a star. They become a source of a fast flow of charged particles. If such a hole is in line with the Earth, we fall under the influence of the solar wind. This means that magnetic activity is again increasing on our planet. And the zones where solar particles collect expand south of the north magnetic pole and north of the south.

April 21 on Sun there was a class M outbreak. Scientists fixed powerful coronal mass ejection. Therefore, on the night of April 24, 2023, a powerful magnetic storm covered Earth. The degree of disturbance of the planet's magnetic field has reached the G4 level - this is one step away from the maximum G5 indicator. Therefore, the inhabitants of not only the northern cities saw the aurora. Aurora borealis appeared in sky above St. Petersburg, Moscow, Ryazan, Ulyanovsk and other regions.