Northern lights’ stunning display
Phenomenon inspires people across Bay Area to snap photos
The night sky over the Bay Area took on a purplish, reddish glow Friday as a powerful geomagnetic storm made the northern lights — or aurora borealis — visible farther south than usual.
Social media users reported seeing the phenomenon across the Bay Area from Marin and Napa to Fremont and Gilroy, sharing images of pink and purple skies.
A Chronicle photographer at Lake Berryessa captured bright, glowing bands of pink, purple and even green-tinged lights over the lake.
While the aurora may be faint to the naked eye, experts said that cameras, even those on smartphones, can capture the hues very well.
“With new technology and our phones, we've been seeing some amazing aurora shots even further south,” Brent Gordon, chief of the space weather services branch at the Space Weather Prediction Center, said Friday morning. “So things that the human eye can't see, your phone can.”
The geomagnetic storm reached Earth around 4 p.m. Friday and was the first observed G5 event since the Halloween storms of 2003, which caused blackouts in Sweden and damaged transformers in South Africa, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which forecasts space events.
The source of the storm “has mostly been a large, complex sunspot cluster that is 17 times the diameter of Earth,” the NOAA said in an X post.
The National Weather Service reported power grid irregularities and degradation to high-frequency communication and GPS.
For the best chance at seeing the colors, experts say people should try to get out of and away from big cities, where lights can make the phenomenon harder to see.