Northern Lights Visible in Louisiana Tonight and Friday?

Louisiana residents have a lot to look forward to this weekend. There's Festival Acadiens et Creoles in Lafayette's Girard Park. The World Championship Gumbo Cookoff will be held in New Iberia. There is a great college football game scheduled in Baton Rouge. And, overnight and overhead Mother Nature might provide the most spectacular show of the weekend.

Forecasters with the National Weather Service in Lake Charles say almost all of Louisiana will enjoy beautiful clear skies tonight and Friday and that should be perfect for enjoying the spectacle that is the aurora borealis or Northern Lights.

Why Might the Northern Lights Be Visible in Louisiana Tonight?

To understand that you need to understand what causes the Northern Lights. The "lights" aren't lights at all. What we see as "light" in the nighttime sky is actually a reaction between energized particles of the solar wind and gasses that are found in the Earth's upper atmosphere.

What makes tonight and Friday's opportunity to see the Northern Lights in the Deep South is a recent uptick in solar activity at the surface of the sun.

Remember the sun is about 93 million miles away from the Earth so an expulsion of gas and solar wind from yesterday should reach our planet later tonight and Friday. And because of the size and scope of the "expulsion," the resulting Northern Lights might be seen as far south as Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and parts of Florida too.

The scope of the coronal mass ejections, that's a fancy science term for the "sun burped", could result in a G4 Level Geomagnetic storm. Only a G5 is higher. And while the extensive solar activity could result in some amazing Northern Lights viewing across the area it could also disrupt sensitive electronic equipment, especially radio and communications signals that are often "bounced" off the atmosphere and satellites.

 What's The Best Way To View the Northern Lights?

You'll need to get away from as much light pollution as you can. If you live out in the country, good for you. The darker the sky the better the view. If you want to take photos of the Northern Lights you'll want a tripod to hold your camera steady. You'll also want to open the shutter exposure on your camera too. This is easily done on most smartphones that offer "night vision" or "night time" settings on the camera.

I just returned from a trip to Iceland for the sole purpose of viewing the Northern Lights. Here's a hint, you can see the lights better with your phone's camera than you can with the naked eye. If you make the adjustment to your settings and the exposure you could come away with some spectacular photos.