Chicago got a rare taste of the North Pole this weekend as a solar storm brought dazzling displays of the aurora borealis, better known as the northern lights, to the Chicago area.
And for anyone who missed the dancing neons that shined Friday night into the wee hours of Saturday, don’t despair — they’re expected to be visible again, if not as vibrantly, through Sunday morning.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicted a slightly weaker display in the sky than on Friday night, with the strongest solar shows forecast between 7 and 10 p.m. Saturday and 3 a.m. to 6 a.m. Sunday.
Michelle Nichols, the Adler Planetarium’s director of public observing, said “pinpoint accuracy” wasn’t possible with solar flares and the subsequent cloud of charged particles that sometimes head toward Earth, lighting up the sky. It all depends on the time they arrive, she said.
For best tracking, Nichols suggested following the NOAA’s latest updates as well as Dr. Tony Phillips, an astronomer and self-proclaimed “space weatherman.”
Saturday night’s electromagnetic activity was expected to be “strongly severe,” perhaps even reaching Friday’s “extreme” levels, according to the NOAA. Nichols called Chicago’s first round of aurora “truly historic.”
“We just had the Super Bowl of solar eclipses,” Nichols said, adding that solar eclipse glasses can be used again to see the sunspot producing the solar storms on the right hand edge of the sun. “What happened last night was the Super Bowl of space weather.”
The phenomenon is only visible in the Chicago area every few decades, and the latest solar activity has powered one of “the best aural displays of the last 500 years,” Nichols said, with the lights being visible as far south as Puerto Rico, which last saw them about a century ago.
While Nichols was only able to catch some of it through the clouds Friday night, she said anyone hoping to catch it Saturday night should get as far away from the city lights as possible.
She also suggested taking pictures with phones or cameras, which are more sensitive than our eyes in some ways and can capture the breathtaking colors with longer exposures.
As for earthly weather conditions, Ricky Castro, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service, said the city would be “pretty unobstructed” Saturday, with forecasts putting cloud coverage at 20% or less.
While the lights may still be visible Sunday night, Castro said forecasts are predicting 30-40% cloud coverage. That’s all subject to change — both the cosmic and local weather, he said.
“None of this is guaranteed as to how viewable it will be locally,” Castro said. “It seems like the better chances would be as you drive north.”
Nichols said seeing the phenomenon at all is something special.
“Just enjoy the fact that we’ve got this opportunity to see the sun essentially touching the Earth,” she said. “It’s that direct connection between the sun and the Earth that creates this.”
Hyde Park residents Meghan Hassett and her husband Max Smith stumbled upon the Friday spectacle by “pure luck” when they returned to retrieve an item they’d forgotten during an earlier visit to Promontory Point.
“We just kind of ended up at the point by chance,” Hassett said. “I always thought it was something you have to travel really far for… it’s just one of those bucket list things that sort of just happened right on top of us.”
The couple watched the eclipse last month at the Museum of Science and Industry, but said there was something extra special about the sporadic nature of the northern lights.
“With an eclipse you can tell exactly how long and where it’s gonna be,” Hassett said. “Something like this you can’t really plan for… and the colors were just magical.”
