A solar flare erupted in the Earth's direction on Monday and is expected to stimulate a strong aurora borealis right before New Year's Eve and cause the night sky to flare up in areas that typically don't get a chance to witness the northern lights, according to The Langley Times. The eruption occurred on a sunspot cluster and caused numerous radio blackouts in the Earth's southern hemisphere and sent a magnitude 1.9 coronal mass ejection shooting toward us.
The sunspot cluster occurred on Dec. 28, shooting an M-class flare directly at Earth, causing extreme-ultraviolet radiation to wash over the upper atmosphere of our planet and stimulating the aforementioned blackouts, according to Discovery News.
Space weather forecasters are predicting that the solar flare will directly hit the Earth's magnetic field on New Year's Eve and light up the sky with natural fireworks just in time for the ringing in of the New Year.
"It means we have a chance of seeing aurora in areas that aren't used to seeing it," said Robyn Fiori, a research scientist for Natural Resources, Canada's Canadian Space Weather Forecast Centre.
The release of the eruption occurred at a time that perfectly aligned with the sun's rotation to point it in the direction of the Earth.
"It's basically a big explosion of particles," Fiori told Black Press. "These kinds of explosions happen all the time. This one was a little bit special because it happened in the centre of the sun right where it's facing the Earth. That means those particles and the magnetic field associated with those particles have a really good chance of interacting with the Earth's magnetic field."
The eruption is expected to occur on Wednesday, just before New Year's Eve, and could cause power fluctuations and even lead to radio blackouts and hinder GPS reception, according to ABC 7 News.
