Northern lights shower parts of Long Island with meteors' glare

An overactive geomagnetic storm and solar flares this past weekend gave Long Islanders a taste of the northern lights, a phenomenon one astronomer said made Earth look from space like "a fluorescent light bulb."

Long Island skywatchers looking for the Perseids meteor shower on Saturday and Sunday morning as well as early Monday captured photos showing the purple and violet-colored solar light event from Lindenhurst to Orient. The lights could return through Wednesday morning, but possibly obscured by cloud cover, astronomers said.

The light show from space usually is confined to states farther north and Canada but the latest has spread as far south as Virginia and Washington D.C., said Shawn Dahl, space weather forecaster at NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center in Boulder, Colorado.

The northern lights, also called aurora borealis, are more visible due to activity in Solar Cycle 25, which is expected to peak with sunspots next July. The geomagnetic storm includes bursts of solar material, solar plasma and coronal mass ejections, Dahl said.

"It showed up with force overnight Saturday and Sunday," Dahl said. "It’s happening a lot more, there are better chances of it and it's very active, more than it originally was thought to be five years ago."

The solar flares were at their highest point Friday since 2003. The northern lights also made an appearance over Long Island in May.

Donald Lubowich, a Hofstra professor of astronomy and physics, said the northern lights at lower solar levels are often not visible on Long Island due to glare from New York City and some Long Island suburbs.

Many of the colors may not be visible to the naked eye but are captured on cellphones or digital cameras.

"It’s very rare and you have to have a lot of geometric storm activity. It may happen every few years at most," Lubowich said. "They’re essentially emissions from the sun that hit our atmosphere and the cause of glowing and larger storm particles hitting the earth. It’s basically causing it to glow like a fluorescent light bulb." 

By John Asbury

john.asbury@newsday.comJohnAsbury

John Asbury is a breaking news and general assignment reporter. He has been with Newsday since 2014 and previously worked at The Press-Enterprise in Riverside, California.