Ask the Master Naturalist: Northern lights should remain more active for next couple of years

Question : I’ve seen more pictures of the northern lights on social media lately. Is something going on or are people just taking more pictures of them?

Answer : The northern lights, or aurora borealis, are on the upswing, both in the northern hemisphere and the southern hemisphere, where they are known as the aurora australis.

Like other planets, the Earth is surrounded by a magnetic shield because we have a molten iron core, and this “magnetosphere” protects us from dangerous charged particles coming from space. The charged particles flow in a pattern around the earth, like water flowing around a boulder in a river. Geomagnetic storms on the sun can cause “coronal mass ejections” of charged particles heading to the earth at 6.2 million miles per hour (you could fly across the U.S. in