A flare at the start of the month has sent solar material and energy towards the Earth
Parts of the UK may get a display of the Northern Lights this week as an ejection of material from the Sun gives a 'glancing blow' to Earth's atmosphere. The Met Office's Space Weather forecast says there could be signs of Aurora Borealis on Tuesday and Wednesday night.
A coronal mass ejection is a significant release of plasma and magnetic energy from the Sun's corona, which is the outermost part of the Sun's atmosphere. These ejections are large bursts of solar wind and magnetic fields that can contain billions of tons of solar material. When a CME occurs, it propels this material outward into space, and if Earth happens to be in the path of the CME, the charged particles and magnetic field from the CME can interact with Earth's magnetic field.
The charged particles from the CME are guided by Earth's magnetic field lines toward the polar regions, where they collide with atoms and molecules in Earth's atmosphere, particularly oxygen and nitrogen. These collisions excite the atmospheric particles, causing them to emit light, which we see as the auroras.
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