"Northern lights may put on New England show this weekend" by Dan Adams | Globe Correspondent, March 16, 2013
The fabled northern lights were expected to make an appearance in New England this weekend, thanks to a massive eruption on the surface of the sun.
Solar scientists say residents had a better than 50 percent chance of glimpsing the northern lights, or aurora borealis, beginning Saturday night, as particles ejected from the sun earlier this week hurtle toward Earth at more than 2 million miles per hour.
The northern lights are produced when charged particles from the sun interact with atoms in Earth’s upper atmosphere. The awe-inspiring displays — shimmering, translucent green, purple, and red “curtains” that seem to billow across the night sky — are common in extreme northern latitudes, where a constant stream of such particles arrives on the so-called “solar wind.” But in New England, and particularly in densely populated areas, sightings are unusual, generally spotted only when eruptions on the sun push the particles farther south and produce a geomagnetic storm....
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Sorry I'm not looking at the sky, readers. I'm more concerned with earthly events.
